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Committee of Privileges convened to look into Raeesah Khan, not Pritam Singh: PMO

2023-07-22 00:00:00.0 海峡时报-新加坡原网页

SINGAPORE - Assertions made on social media that a Committee of Privileges was convened to look into Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh’s alleged non-disclosure of Ms Raeesah Khan’s lies are based on a false premise.

In a statement on Friday, the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) office said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Indranee Rajah, who is also Leader of the House, had asked for a correction involving a Facebook post put up on Wednesday.

The post, on the Facebook page of one Andrew Loh, said if Mr Singh’s case warranted a Committee of Privileges, then he suggested that one should similarly be called to look into Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s non-disclosure of his knowledge of former Speaker Tan Chuan-Jin’s affair with an MP and letting him continue to be Speaker of Parliament.

PM Lee on Monday said he had learnt about the affair between Mr Tan and former Tampines GRC MP Cheng Li Hui some time after the 2020 General Election.

The statement said the Pofma office was instructed to issue a correction direction to Mr Loh, and a targeted correction direction in relation to TikTok user jansenng1 for reproducing Mr Loh’s Facebook post.

A statement on government fact-checking website Factually said Mr Loh’s post is false because the Committee of Privileges was linked to Ms Khan’s conduct, “for speaking various untruths in Parliament, and for failing to substantiate an allegation she made in Parliament on Aug 3, 2021”.

Ms Indranee had made a complaint against Ms Khan, who was then a Sengkang GRC MP, for breaches of privilege, and that complaint about Ms Khan’s conduct was referred to the Committee of Privileges, the statement added. The complaint was not about Mr Singh, who is secretary-general of the Workers’ Party, and “did not refer to any aspect of Mr Singh’s conduct”, it said.

The statement also said Mr Singh did appear as a witness before the committee, and the committee, in its report presented to Parliament on Feb 10, 2022, found that Mr Singh had wanted to “suppress the fact that he had known about Ms Khan’s untruth in Parliament for three months”.

The committee also found that Mr Singh had told untruths to the committee, and the committee recommended that Parliament refer this conduct of being untruthful to the public prosecutor.

On Feb 15, 2022, Parliament resolved to accept the committee’s recommendation to refer Mr Singh’s conduct in being untruthful to the public prosecutor.

The Factually statement said: “The remaining assertions made in the Facebook post (which was reproduced in the TikTok post by user “jansenng1”) are based on the false premise that a Committee of Privileges was convened to look into Mr Pritam Singh’s alleged non-disclosure of his knowledge of Ms Khan’s lies.”

Ms Indranee said: “Loh will be required to insert a correction notice on top of his post, stating that the post contains a false statement of fact, with a link to the Government’s clarification, so that readers can read both the original post and the facts, and decide what is the truth.”

TikTok will also be required to place a similar correction notice to the TikTok post by jansenng1.