Pritam Singh appeal: Key points from the prosecution and the defence

Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh returned to court on Nov 4 to appeal against the conviction and sentence meted out to him in February for lying to a parliamentary committee.

The hearing opened with defence counsel Andre Jumabhoy arguing that the case boiled down to which witnesses were believed by the trial judge, Deputy Principal District Judge Luke Tan. Mr Jumabhoy said he hoped to persuade High Court Justice Steven Chong that the trial judge had “ignored crucial pieces of evidence” in convicting Singh.

The prosecution, on the other hand, highlighted multiple pieces of corroborative evidence for each of the two charges, including the WP chief’s inaction for two months after he and other party leaders found out about former MP Raeesah Khan’s untruth to Parliament.

Singh had in February been found guilty of the two charges, which related to him knowingly giving false evidence to the Committee of Privileges (COP) about two meetings he had with Ms Khan on Aug 8 and Oct 3, 2021.

Justice Chong said the appeal turned on two key statements Singh had made. The first was him telling Ms Khan to take her lie “to the grave” at the Aug 8 meeting, and the second was Singh telling her at the Oct 3 meeting that he would not judge her.

Here are four key points from the defence, and four from the prosecution:

1. Defence reiterates inconsistencies in Raeesah Khan’s testimony

Mr Jumabhoy cast doubts on the veracity of Ms Khan’s account of the Aug 8, 2021, meeting between herself and WP leaders Singh, Sylvia Lim and Faisal Manap – the meeting at which it was allegedly agreed that Ms Khan would take her lie “to the grave”.

The lawyer said Ms Khan had given three different accounts of the meeting before the COP and at Singh’s trial, including one instance when there was no suggestion that Singh had asked her to take the lie to the grave.

“Everyone can see that there are differences, and to pretend that there is no difference does a disservice,” Mr Jumabhoy said.

He argued that Singh, on the other hand, was consistent with what was said during the meeting at his house on Aug 8, 2021 – which was that at some point Ms Khan “would need to clarify the lie”.

Justice Chong replied that Ms Khan might not have used the phrase consistently in the three versions, but that does not mean it was not said.

The defence cannot ignore the text message that Ms Khan sent to her then aides Loh Pei Ying and Yudhishthra Nathan immediately after the Aug 8, 2021, meeting. The message stated that WP leaders had agreed the best course of action was to take the information to the grave.

Mr Jumabhoy also noted that the defence had attempted to impeach Ms Khan’s credibility during the earlier trial, in relation to a separate set of inconsistencies as to why she lied again on Oct 4, 2021.

Judge Tan had ruled that Ms Khan’s credit was not impeached.

2. Meaning of ‘I will not judge you’

Justice Chong and Mr Jumabhoy also had an exchange about the context in which Singh said the words “I will not judge you” to Ms Khan.

This related to the second charge against Singh: that he had falsely testified to the COP that when he spoke to Ms Khan on Oct 3, 2021, he had wanted to convey to her that she had to come clean about her lie if it came up in Parliament the next day.

At his trial, Singh had acknowledged that he had said “I will not judge you”, but disputed the context in which the phrase was used.

This conversation took place at Ms Khan’s house, with no one else within earshot.

The judge noted that after Ms Khan repeated her lie in Parliament on Oct 4, 2021, Singh had told Ms Khan: “Look at the choice you made.”

Justice Chong asked Mr Jumabhoy how he would explain Singh’s use of the word “choice”. “He said ‘look at the choice you made’, not ‘the mess you made’,” the judge noted.

Mr Jumabhoy replied that Singh was expressing his frustration at Ms Khan for repeating the lie. “He (Singh) was frustrated because it was inconsistent with what he told her on Oct 3,” said Mr Jumabhoy.

The expression “I will not judge you” takes into account “responsibility”, Mr Jumabhoy added.

In return, Justice Chong said the expression is not uncommon, and is typically used when someone is doing something not quite right.

“It will be odd to say ‘I will not judge you’ when the context is that the person is going to do the right thing. That is how I would objectively judge those words,” said the judge.

To this, Mr Jumabhoy replied: “It is not quite as clear-cut as Your Honour made it seem. It could be either way.”

3. Defence takes aim at credibility of aides

Mr Jumabhoy also attempted to characterise Ms Khan and her aides as inconsistent witnesses, and recounted their actions.

He also questioned whether Ms Khan was telling the truth in a key piece of evidence – the “take it to the grave” text message that she sent to the two WP aides, Ms Loh and Mr Nathan – immediately after her meeting with WP leaders on Aug 8, 2021.

It was “interesting” that the trio had a Zoom meeting on Aug 7, a day before Ms Khan’s meeting with Singh, said Mr Jumabhoy.

He also questioned why the “take it to the grave” element was missing from another text exchange on the matter between Ms Khan and Ms Loh two days later.

Through a series of messages exchanged between Ms Khan and the aides in early October 2021, Mr Jumabhoy argued that they were nudging her to operate in a grey area about her lie.

“The flavour that the messages give is that they weren’t keen for Ms Khan to tell the truth, and they were advising her on various ways to avoid confessing that she had lied,” he said.

The defence lawyer also recounted that Mr Nathan had given untrue reasons for certain redactions to WhatsApp messages provided to the COP.

“They were redacted because they were telling her to continue to lie, not to come clean,” he said.

4. Pritam’s lack of action during ‘critical’ 8-week period

Justice Chong asked the defence to explain why Singh appeared to be “doing nothing” about the lie between Aug 8, 2021, and Oct 3, 2021.

He said that if Singh’s position was that Ms Khan had to come clean at some point, steps would have been taken during this “critical” eight-week period.

Ms Khan had confessed her lie to the party’s leaders at a meeting at Singh’s house on Aug 8. On Oct 3, the day before a Parliament sitting, Singh and his wife had visited Ms Khan at her home.

The judge questioned if this behaviour is consistent with someone who wanted the truth to be clarified, or someone who was prepared to let the lie be buried.

Mr Jumabhoy said that Singh described Ms Khan’s lie as an “earth-shattering discovery” that “involved an incident of significant personal detriment (and to the party)”.

Singh had wanted to give Ms Khan time to settle herself before going to Parliament. The WP leader was also focused on the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act (Fica), which was slated for debate on Oct 4, 2021, and which the WP had a lot of interest in, Mr Jumabhoy said.

He added that Ms Khan had shingles in September, and Singh had been dealing with other issues during that period, including personal matters pertaining to his children.

The trial judge did not mention these other things that were going on, said the defence lawyer.

“(Singh’s) inaction is partly explained, as I have submitted there were a number of issues he was dealing with at that time,” said Mr Jumabhoy. Not dealing with the lie was never meant to be a permanent position, he added.

5. Prosecution points to five key pieces of evidence to corroborate each charge

Addressing the court in the afternoon, Deputy Attorney-General (DAG) Goh Yihan listed five key pieces of evidence that supported each of the two charges.

On the first charge, the evidence included Ms Khan’s “take it to the grave” message, Ms Loh’s and Mr Nathan’s testimonies, and Singh’s failure to follow up with Ms Khan even once on the matter between Aug 8 and Oct 3, 2021.

On the second charge, DAG Goh pointed to, among other things, WP chairwoman Sylvia Lim’s record of the party’s internal disciplinary proceedings – where Singh said he had told Ms Khan it was her call whether to continue with the narrative – and Ms Khan’s Oct 7 e-mail to the WP leaders thanking them for guiding her without judgment.

DAG Goh also said that Singh did not make any inference to the trial judge’s “thorough finding” that the WP chief was an unreliable witness. He provided the court a table listing eight instances where the judge who presided over Singh’s trial had found his testimony “incoherent, inconsistent to affect his general credibility”.

The prosecution also noted that the defence had earlier in the day said Singh did not use the words “your call” in the WP disciplinary hearing, and that this completely contradicted Singh’s own testimony at trial.

“We say that these examples show that Pritam’s credibility, which was said by the district judge to be unreliable, should be upheld,” said DAG Goh.

Justice Chong, however, said the general submission attacking Singh’s credibility in a vacuum “is not particularly appealing”, going so far as to say he did not find it useful.

He told the prosecution to reframe its submission, “instead of saying he lied on eight occasions so everything he said is a lie”.

6. Lack of follow-up by Pritam showed there was nothing to follow up

It is undisputed that Singh never followed up with Ms Khan even once on her untruth in the eight weeks between the two meetings, and “this radio silence speaks volumes”, said DAG Goh.

Responding to the reasons raised by the defence for the inaction, he asked: “Was he so busy with the Fica matters that he could not raise this important point, a politically important point, to Ms Khan?”

The prosecution noted that after the Aug 8 meeting, Singh had followed up with Ms Khan about certain Muslim issues she had raised in her speech in Parliament.

“The point is that if there were something to follow up from the Aug 8 meeting, Pritam has shown himself very able and willing to follow up,” he said.

But the fact that he did not follow up on Ms Khan’s lie must lead to the natural inference that there was nothing to follow up at all, added DAG Goh.

Earlier in the day, Justice Chong asked the defence if Singh’s behaviour in those eight weeks was consistent with that of someone who wanted the truth to be clarified, or someone who was prepared to let it be buried.

The judge noted that there was “a complete absence of any discussion” prior to the WP leaders’ meeting with former WP chief Low Thia Khiang on Oct 12.

Separately, the prosecution also pointed to Singh’s behaviour on Oct 4, after Ms Khan doubled down on her lie in Parliament. By Singh’s own evidence he did not castigate her, and this was inconsistent with someone who had told her she needed to clarify her lie that day, said DAG Goh.

7. Low Thia Khiang’s unchallenged evidence spotlighted

The prosecution cited Mr Low’s unchallenged evidence from the trial as crucial in corroborating both the charges that Singh had been found guilty of.

At their Oct 12, 2021, meeting, Ms Lim had told Singh and Mr Low that the WP was considering a press conference to address the issue, and Mr Low replied that the proper avenue to do so was Parliament.

This showed that Singh had, until that meeting, never intended for Ms Khan to clarify the lie in Parliament, said DAG Goh.

“Mr Singh never chimes in and says ‘we have already decided for Ms Khan to clarify the truth in Parliament, we have got this covered already’,” he noted.

In its submissions, the prosecution also noted that it was Mr Low’s evidence that Ms Lim had said at the meeting that the Government did not know that Ms Khan had lied, and that it would not be easy to verify this given the number of police stations in Singapore.

Mr Low disagreed with Ms Lim, and said that Ms Khan had to apologise and clarify the issue regardless of whether the Government could find out about the lie.

This evidence, which was not challenged by the defence, showed that as late as Oct 11 Singh had, in tacit agreement with Ms Lim, believed that it may be possible that the lie may not be uncovered and would not come up in Parliament again, said the prosecution.

8. Conspiracy to bury the lie was something new

DAG Goh notes that the defence’s case – in mentioning the Aug 7 Zoom meeting – was that there was a conspiracy between Ms Khan, Mr Nathan and Ms Loh to bury the lie.

He questioned the fact that the defence did not raise the issue during the trial, and did not put questions to any of the three about their involvement in such a plot.

There is no reason for Ms Khan to lie to Mr Nathan and Ms Loh in the WhatsApp message about Singh asking her to take the lie to the grave, given that she knew they had access to Singh and could tell him, he added.

Earlier in the day when the defence raised the issue, Justice Chong said that as an experienced defence lawyer, Mr Jumabhoy knows that conspiracy requires the act of more than one person.

“Your case theory is three people,” said the judge. “You did not put it to Ms Loh and Mr Nathan that they were part of this conspiracy – that is a huge omission.”

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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