Politics: The trial of Pritam or Raeesah?

The first week of the trial of Pritam Singh, leader of the opposition, for allegedly lying to a Committee of Privileges (CoP), saw his former protégé, Raeesah Khan, under fire from Andre Jumabhoy, Singh’s counsel. The original sin was a lie that Khan, then a fellow member of Parliament (MP) with the Workers’ Party (WP), told Parliament on August 3rd 2021. She claimed to have gone to the police station with a sexual assault survivor, who was allegedly met by demeaning comments from an officer. Four days later, she told Singh she’d lied. But she only came clean to Parliament almost three months later, saying she’d heard the anecdote in a survivor support group. Singh’s case rests on whether he prodded her to maintain the fiction in that intervening period.

This week’s events indicate that Khan, at best, has a troubling relationship with the truth and, at worst, is a serial liar. Her initial lie to Parliament was followed by a web of lies to Singh. She concocted details of exactly when and where she met the imaginary survivor, at a bus stop near the Bedok police station. A separate line of questioning was around her understanding of the word “substantiate”, which Singh had written on her original August 3rd anecdote, as he vetted her speech. Khan didn’t bother editing, went ahead with the lie anyway, and this week told the court that she didn’t understand the word’s full import. When pushed by Jumabhoy on apparent contradictions in her statements to the CoP and court, and if what she told the CoP was true, she replied: “It was true at the time.” We are, as Khan’s words continue to demonstrate, living in an age when personal truth trumps all. As with her initial lie, this week’s proceedings, broadcast across society, will sadly make doubters grill future survivors even more. 

A disservice to women, and the youth too. She’s fed the unfortunate caricature of a Gen Z social justice warrior, on a self-righteous mission to right historical wrongs, but inept in terms of basic communication and procedure, needing excessive hand-holding and specific directions for every task. Singh had sent an e-mail to all WP MPs on October 1st 2021, in which he stressed the importance of backing up parliamentary comments. “What should I do, Pritam?” she texted him three days later in Parliament. Not hearing back, she lied again.

All this is not to exonerate Singh. The allegations against him by Khan are serious, including that he instructed her to take the lie “to the grave”. If he’s found to have encouraged her dishonesty, he also bears responsibility for the above. And even if not, he’ll be judged by the public for recruiting a neophyte and then not managing her decisively enough. 

Addendum: Late yesterday, Loh Pei Ying, Khan’s former aide, under questioning from Jumabhoy, admitted to redacting a comment from fellow aide Yudhishthra Nathan, which said “...we should just not give too many details”, in her submission to the CoP; and lying about the reason for the redaction. This admission could bolster Singh’s case. Loh, who takes the stand again today, is a co-founder of Kontinentalist, and an occasional Jom contributor.

Politics: A Union denied

Allianz’s proposed acquisition of a 51 percent stake in NTUC Income Insurance from NTUC Enterprise (NE), which owns nearly 73 percent of it, caused rare outrage from establishment elders in July. Tommy Koh, ambassador-at-large, criticised it; Tan Suee Chieh, former NE CEO, penned open letters to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), alleging that NE had reneged on past promises to hold its Income shares in perpetuity.

The charges were blithely dismissed. Lim Boon Heng, NE chairman, told The Straits Times (ST), “If we blindly follow our emotions and find ourselves unable to act, we are compromising the interests of society.” Meanwhile, NE and Income called Tan’s claims “untrue”. Indeed, so firm appeared to be the establishment’s backing that Allianz subjected commuters at one MRT station to a bizarrely ominous advertising slogan: “You might not know our name yet, soon you will”.

Well, not for the right reasons. The Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) has concluded that the proposed deal is not in the public interest. When Income was restructured from a cooperative to a public non-listed company in 2022, MCCY had exempted it from a statutory requirement to surrender a S$2bn surplus to the Cooperative Societies Liquidation Account (CSLA). But “there is no clarity on how this sum would be directed towards advancing Income’s social mission [after the acquisition],” Edwin Tong, MCCY’s minister, told parliament. Instead, Allianz had proposed Income return S$1.8bn in “post-acquisition efficiencies” to shareholders—Allianz itself being one of them—over the next three years. “MCCY had not seen this information earlier,” admitted Tong.

Chee Hong Tat, beleaguered minister for transport, and also beleaguered MAS deputy chairman, attributed it to an “information gap” between government agencies. MAS informed MCCY of the capital extraction only after a heated parliamentary debate on August 6th. “I wonder if it is only me that finds it troubling that there was no coordinated discussion between the two major relevant regulators, MAS and MCCY, in advance of the proposed deal,” mused Jamus Lim, WP MP.

The government’s convoluted calisthenics to extract itself from this jam were equally troubling. On Monday, the Insurance (Amendment) Bill allowing MAS to consider MCCY’s views—there was previously no such regulatory provision—was tabled; on Wednesday it was passed. Officially, the Allianz deal can now be blocked. “Passing legislation which has or is seen to have retrospective effect must not be taken lightly,” said He Ting Ru, another WP MP. “This is especially so when it…has the potential to hurt Singapore’s reputation for certainty, stability and predictability of our commercial laws.” Others wondered why the MAS didn’t use the latitude accorded to it in the pre-existing Insurance Act to question the deal even without MCCY’s advice. No one’s holding their breath for answers.

Politics: Can we finally say goodbye to Oxley?

Lee Kuan Yew’s final will had a demolition clause. In it, his primary wish was that the house at 38 Oxley Road “be demolished immediately after my death, or if my daughter Wei Ling would prefer to continue living in the original house, immediately after she moves out of the House.” With Lee Wei Ling’s death last week, that time has come. And this week, Lee Hsien Yang, his youngest child and owner of the house, announced that he is applying for permission to demolish the house, “and thereafter to build a small private dwelling, to be held within the family in perpetuity.” His plans for the property are significant. In the bitter feud that pitted Lee Hsien Loong, senior minister, against his siblings, members and supporters of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) have long accused Lee Hsien Yang, without any real justification, of supporting demolition not for piety but profit. They’ll find it hard to continue that line of attack.

That doesn’t mean the house will come down. We know that some in the PAP want it preserved, perhaps to turn it into a party shrine. The elder Lee would have shuddered at the prospect, though he was aware of it. In 2012 he said in an e-mail that “…the cabinet has opposed tearing it down and rebuilding, because 2 PMs have lived in the house, me and Loong…” The evidence suggests that he was under intense emotional duress when he inserted a secondary wish into his demolition clause. “If our children are unable to demolish the House as a result of any changes in the laws, rules or regulations binding them, it is my wish that the House never be opened to others except my children, their families and descendants.”

The Ministry of National Development said it will take into account “Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s wishes and the public interest, including considering any applications with regard to the property.” There are many reasons to support the demolition, including that it was the elder Lee’s overriding desire, and that we’re all just so tired of talking about it.

Some further reading: In “The battle over Lee Kuan Yew’s last will”, Jom’s editor-in-chief, in his private capacity, dissects the seven wills, and points out the numerous problems with the government’s Ministerial Committee on 38 Oxley Road.

History weekly by Faris Joraimi

Proposed laws will allow government acquisition of archaeological objects, to protect Singapore’s “cultural patrimony”. You’ll need a permit to conduct your own archaeological dig, and you’ll have to report any artefacts found (this includes shipwrecks, which I’ll come back to); the National Heritage Board (NHB) will then be able to declare ownership over them. Conservation and heritage experts expressed scepticism to ST. For example, the laws will probably be administrative at best, without additional measures such as introducing heritage impact assessments before development projects. Heaven knows how many artefacts we’ve probably already lost to all the soil, silt and sand pounded, dug up, and shifted every day in construction-city Singapore.

But why stop at our cultural patrimony? While these legislative safeguards intend to prevent private landowners from profiting off archaeological finds in their backyards, and to discourage treasure-hunting, we may want to look at how we’ve gained from other countries’ heritage. The Belitung Shipwreck is one controversial example. Around AD 830, a ship sank off Pulau Belitung (in today’s Indonesia). Built using timber from Arabia, with Austronesian lashed-lug construction, it carried a hoard of Tang-dynasty ceramics, gold and silver. Licensed by local authorities and financed by German engineer Tilman Walterfang, an excavation company and the Indonesian navy removed the wreck from its resting-place. In 2005, the Singapore government and then-Sentosa Leisure Group (now Sentosa Development Corporation) purchased the wreck for US$32m (S$53.1m), and its cargo now glimmers from the displays of the Asian Civilisations Museum, christened the “Tang Shipwreck” (note the choice of name). A furious debate ensued on the ethics and legality of the “salvage” operation and subsequent sale, especially in the US when the Smithsonian cancelled an exhibition of it due to backlash.

It’s one thing for North Americans—with their history of loot and plunder—to talk about the perils of “commercialising” heritage, but what about us? Even if everything was “legal”, and we can afford to acquire artefacts from other countries, should we? Was the Indonesian government partly to blame for not regulating archaeological excavations? Can Singapore not also claim this interconnected history of vibrant Asian commerce? Will this encourage looting-for-profit elsewhere? When we dig into our borderless past, expect more baggage beyond the buried treasure.

Arts: To Shahid, with love.

“They say I am a stud / But I’m just a humble mat,” rapped Omar, the class clown, “who likes to create art / For people...who like art!” Shahid Nasheer, 28, strutted around the stage, chewing scenery and stealing hearts as a loveable teen rascal in “Secondary: The Musical” earlier this year. This followed his star turn as Adam, a precocious young political science professor, in “Brown Boys Don’t Tell Jokes”. Shahid was about to score a hattrick in his third headlining role with Checkpoint Theatre in the teen coming-of-age drama “Hard Mode”, which opens today. Then the theatre company announced, a month ago, that he’d be withdrawing from the play. And earlier this week, it announced his death from complications from leukaemia treatment.

Shahid graduated with an acting degree from LASALLE College of the Arts in 2020, perhaps the most precarious time for a promising young actor to enter the industry, when hundreds of shows were shuttering because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Undaunted, he taught himself sound engineering by watching YouTube videos, then went on to produce a seven-episode audio play by award-winning playwright Chong Tze Chien and engineer a trio of experimental works for pioneering performance company T:>Works. 

During the astonishing musical’s sold-out run—as a beaming Shahid bowed to ovation after standing ovation, cancer still nowhere on the horizon—Singapore’s close-knit theatre community was certain of his stardom. weish, the creator and composer of “Secondary”, cited some eerily prescient lyrics from her musical, where Omar makes the long and dreaded walk to the school disciplinarian’s office to find out his fate: “‘cause if anyone were to survive / and come out alive / it’s you, Omar”. She posted on social media, “how cruel, this memory—rehearsing this allegorical send-off a thousand times. nothing could’ve prepared us for truly losing you.” Shahid had remained stoic despite a gruelling chemotherapy regimen: living life on the hardest mode. “I’m the best patient here so says the nurses,” he posted to Instagram a fortnight ago, grinning while gaunt in a hospital gown, “all I need is strength, bravery and hope to fight this battle, if you know me, you I know have those in spades. ❤️ I’ll be back ❤️” He won’t be, but the show, in his honour, will go on.

Tech: Less scams with Android

iPhones may dominate the headlines, but Android devices reign in Singaporean pockets with 67.6 percent market share. Google is arming these users with two new security features. The first allows filtering out of potentially malicious SMS and RCS (Rich Communication Services) messages from international numbers. This is particularly relevant given that more than 700 text-based scams were reported in just the first-half of 2024. However, the requirement for manual activation underscores the importance of user awareness and proactive security measures. The second feature keeps Google Play Protect active during calls. This will hopefully neutralise a sophisticated scam in which fraudsters install harmful apps by convincing victims to turn off their security settings.

In September alone, victims lost more than S$6.7m to impersonation scams. As scamsters become more sophisticated, it is vital for tech companies and local authorities to join forces—these latest initiatives are part of Google’s broader collaboration with the Singapore Police Force and the Infocomm Media Development Authority. At the same time, Google’s emphasis on user vigilance remains crucial. The evolving nature of scams means that technological solutions must be complemented by our collective efforts to always be on guard. 

Tech: 30 by when?

Significant delays have hit two major projects of “30 by 30”—Singapore’s ambitious plan to produce 30 percent of its national nutritional needs locally by 2030. The Lim Chu Kang masterplan to develop 390 hectares into a high-productivity agri-food zone is still stuck in the “feasibility and planning phase”, four years after it was announced. Meanwhile, construction of the Agri-Food Innovation Park (AFIP) in Sungei Kadut, originally slated for completion in 2021, has ground to a halt. Authorities gave no reasons, apart from a pandemic-induced five-month delay in 2020, and an investigation into some unauthorised tree felling in January 2021. Furthermore, several farms at both sites, including some that were awarded plots six years ago, have withdrawn due to business complications and construction delays. This has led to re-tendering of some plots, and raised questions about the effectiveness of the current tender system. 

Singapore imports more than 90 percent of its food, from 187 countries. Plans like 30 by 30 are vital in our quest for food security, but the Lim Chu Kang and Sungei Kadut experiences highlight implementation issues as well as the challenges inherent in balancing technological innovation with environmental concerns. Perhaps it’s time to rethink both objectives and timelines.

Amendment: the comment that Loh Pei Ying had redacted was incorrectly worded in an earlier version.

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