Is there a way to independently verify that the COP made correct decisions in the Khan affair? I believe there is.I believe it's always a healthy exercise to assume everybody else is lying - or, at the very least, that they are wrong. Questioning everything and everyone (including their motives) is necessary to cultivate an independent mind.
Is it possible that COP was just a political arm of PAP, trying to smear and destroy political opposition? Absolutely. Things like this happen all over the world, after all.
Predictably, many WP supporters are complaining about alleged politicisation of the process, given how the committee was dominated by PAP members, lengthy hearings etc.
Do they have a point? Is anybody trying to dupe us? And if so - who might it be?
Wouldn't it be good if we could - each one of us, spectators - independently determine whether COP was right? Whether we're not taken for a ride by crafty politicians staging a wayang for the public?Of course - and here's how we can.
Let's look at the facts and arguments of all participants and consider whether an OPPOSITE decision could be made on their basis. I.e. could the COP have decided Pritam was not guilty of any transgressions?After all, the argument of politicisation is based on an accusation that the evidence is being misrepresented or misinterpreted by COP to lay unfair blame on WP leaders (and, possibly, have them lose their seats).If this is false then it should be possible to argue that the facts could (or even should) absolve Pritam Singh of responsibility for not instructing Raeesah to tell the truth and lying to COP itself that he did. (I'm not mentioning Faisal Manap, because he openly refused to answer questions - and that's what got him in trouble).So, can they?
Can we genuinely say, given all of the details, that Pritam Singh is not guilty of misguiding Raeesah Khan and lying to the COP about his role in the affair?Let's first look at what we know FOR CERTAIN about his response to Raeesah:1. He was informed about her lie on Aug. 7 and 8.2. No action was taken then or in September.3. He met with her on Oct. 3 and - by his own admission - told her to "take ownership of the matter" + that "he would not judge her". He admitted before COP that he did not instruct her directly to "tell the truth".
At the same time he also claimed that he was "very clear” that Ms Khan had to tell the truth, if the issue was raised in Parliament the next day (4 Oct). He also said that he did not give Ms Khan a choice whether to tell the truth." (take a look at the extract from COP in the image I attached)
We may deliberate on what Pritam Singh may have intended for Raeesah to do but given the version of events agreed by BOTH him and her, the only thing that is certain is that he was NOT "very clear" that she had to tell the truth.Even if we go strictly by his version of events, he was very vague about his expectations.
This is further corroborated by Sylvia Lim's note from DP proceedings where he admitted telling Raeesah "it was your call" back in October. His subsequent suggestion that it should have occurred to her to tell the truth only proves his ambiguity. And the meaning of "your call" is to give person a choice to decide what to do.Let me emphasize - these things are not debatable, they mean exactly what they mean.
Both Pritam's words and his behavior show that he was AT LEAST highly ambiguous in his conversations with Raeesah.And this is a major problem when we evaluate the second part of the COP accusation against him - that he lied to the committee about his role.His claims of having instructed Raeesah to tell the truth have no basis - including in his own testimony about his behavior and conversations with her.
Whether or not he intended for her to tell the truth we do not know. But what he did or said was never as clear as he claimed.And because of that, can we say he was truthful to COP about what he did? I think not.
In other words, whether or not you believe that he had good intentions, he clearly tried to make himself look better than he was in reality.
His emphasis not only on not being responsible for what his MP said but actually claiming he told her to admit to the lie, suggest he was trying to mislead the COP.And we can arrive at this conclusion without even evaluating the WhatsApp messages sharing the instruction of "taking it to the grave", or the testimonies of Raeesah's aides, lack of cooperation with the police investigation in October and so on.
This is only on the basis of either his own testimony or mutually agreed versions of events + Sylvia Lim's note.
Summing up: whether Pritam instructed Raeesah to keep repeating the lie or bury it if possible, we will never know with absolute certainty. We may assume that she is unstable, that she made the WhatsApp messages up, that she is "disenchanted" with WP and trying to sink it - fine, let's do it. Let's assume all of that is true.
But even so, the adamancy with which Pritam tried to convince COP that he was "very clear" and "used the words that amounted to instructing Raeesah to tell the truth" have obviously no basis even in his own testimonies.And that's more than enough to conclude that he tried to deceive the committee about his role. I.e. he lied to it.
