Singapore starts trial of Opposition leader Pritam Singh for lying under oath

The trial of Singapore’s opposition leader, Pritam Singh, who heads the Workers’ Party, began on Monday. He has been accused of lying during a parliamentary committee inquiry.

Singh, 48, who faces two charges of lying under oath to a parliamentary committee, was testifying in an investigation into a former lawmaker of his party, Raeesah Khan, who had lied in a parliament about a sexual assault case.

Singh faces charges related to his testimony during the hearings held in December 2021, when he is accused of providing false statement regarding his conversations with Khan.

Singh has pleaded not guilty.

As per reports, Deputy Attorney-General Ang Cheng Hock said the accused misled the committee of privileges by giving false evidence “about what he wanted Ms. Khan to do in relation to the untruth she had spoken in parliament.”

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Singh’s trial commences a week after the former minister was imprisoned. S. Iswaran, a former transport minister, has begun a 12-month sentence for acquiring valuable items as a public servant and for obstructing justice.

This is the first instance of something like this happening in almost 50 years in a city-state that prides itself on clean governance.

Singh, a trained lawyer and MP since 2011, pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges that could result in fines of up to S$7,000 (US$5,360), three years in prison, or both.

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On Monday, the prosecution’s first witness was Khan, who shared her previous admiration for Singh. “I revered him,” she testified. “I viewed him as someone I really looked up to, someone who seemed to have all the answers.” Khan was elected in 2020 at the age of 26, becoming the youngest MP in Singapore’s 104-seat legislature.

Khan, who left the Workers’ Party and her parliamentary seat in November 2021, informed the committee that Singh had pressured her to uphold the lie. She was fined S$35,000 for her involvement in the incident. In Singapore, MPs facing fines over S$10,000 or imprisonment for at least a year can lose their seats and be disqualified from running for office for five years.