特权委员会咋啦？

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE COMMITTEE OF PRIVILEGES?
by Teo Soh Lung

It is a pain to watch the examinations of Ms Loh Pei Ying and Ms Raeesah Khan by Minister Edwin Tong and his team. While they try to appear fair, polite, understanding, patient and even sympathetic to the witnesses, it is not difficult to see that all of them were not trying to ascertain facts but were looking for slip ups and words that would make the leaders of the Workers' Party look bad and set the witnesses on a war path with the leaders of the party. It is evident that their line of questioning and suggestions are intended to inflict maximum damage on its leadership.

The committee's hypocrisy is shown from the speed at which their first Special Report was published - on 3 December 2021 or soon after the evidence of the first batch of three witnesses (Ms Loh Pei Ying, Ms Raeesah Khan and Mr Yudhishthra Nathan were taken. In paragraph 6 of the report, the committee arrived at this decision:

"After hearing the above witnesses, the Committee resolved to make the entire video recording of their evidence available to Parliament and thereby to the public through the Parliament website."

If the committee have an iota of consideration for the witnesses, especially Ms Raeesah Khan, they would not have made the video recordings public for audiences not only in Singapore but all over the world. Further, what and where is the urgency for such an interim report to be made public when other witnesses who they intend to call have not testified?

I am exceedingly disappointed by the action of the so called "fact finding" objective of the Committee of Privileges. Totally devoid of understanding and empathy (though Minister Edwin Tong kept repeating "I understand" during the proceedings), they have savaged Ms Raeesah Khan, a victim of a sexual assault. It is hypocritical to continuously use this phrase "victim of sexual assault" and pretend that it would alleviate the trauma of the victim when by their actions, they have aggravated the trauma of the victim. What they should have done was to keep the proceedings within the chambers and publish in written form at the appropriate time as they have done in past proceedings.

PAP ministers are not known for being compassionate to opposition political parties. If they have an opportunity to score political points, they would do their utmost. This means employing means that may not be fair or even contrary to the rules of the game, in this case, parliament. And this is what they have done.

On 4 October 2021, Ms Raeesah Khan was subjected to threats by Minister Shanmugam after she refused to disclose information he requested. He threatened that the police would contact her for "an interview". The police naturally obeyed the Minister and followed up by email requests. All these appear in the police statement annexed to the Special Report.

The minister knew full well when he made the threat that a lie uttered in parliament should be rectified in parliament as it is privileged. Why did he make the threat and instruct the police to investigate Ms Raeesah Khan? Is he taking advantage of Ms Raeesah Khan's lack of experience and ignorance? As a minister for law and home affairs, I do not expect such conduct from him.

Finally, I am not amused at the speaker, Tan Chuan Jin's repeated assurance at the end of the taking of evidence of each witness. Why did he tell each of them "... Do note that the transcript and any evidence given to the committee are not to be disclosed to anyone, not to be published and kept strictly confidential until the committee has presented it report to parliament which means that you are not to discuss this with anyone else and would include your family as well."

Are committee members robots? Do they know what they themselves have done by making the proceedings public even before its conclusion?