Singapore — The bombshell that Workers Party MP Raeesah Khan dropped in Parliament on Monday has unleashed a barrage of criticism, sparked calls for to resign and ignited a firestorm of speculation about the impact on the party’s future.
It all began when Ms Khan, 27, who represents Sengkang GRC, admitted that she lied when she told the House on Aug 3 that she had accompanied a victim of sexual assault to the police station, and accused the police of making inappropriate remarks. It happened during a debate on empowering women.
An extended exchange between Ms Khan and the Leader of the House, Ms Indranee Rajah, ended with Ms Indranee referring the matter to Parliament’s Committee of Privileges, a step that could lead to the errant MP being censured or worse.
And that’s not all.
On Tuesday (Nov 2), the Workers Party announced that a disciplinary panel had been formed “to look into the admissions made by MP Raeesah Khan in Parliament on 1 Nov 2021, arising from an earlier speech made by the MP in Parliament on 3 Aug 2021.”
The panel comprising Mr Singh, party chairperson Sylvia Lim and Vice-Chair Faisal Manap, will report its findings to the WP’s Central Executive Committee.
Could this end Ms Khan’s political career?
In the campaign for last year’s General Elections, Ms Khan had emerged as one of the upcoming stars in Singapore’s political arena, and not even a police report filed against her for remarks she made online some years back could to stop her ascent.
A social activist since her teens and the daughter of one-time presidential aspirant Farid Khan, she made history in 2020 for becoming not only the first female Malay opposition Member of Parliament, but also the youngest Member of the House.
While several netizens have defended her because she did apologise publicly and set the record straight, many think the lies she uttered in Parliament are enough to kill her credibility and end her political career.
On Monday, at times seeming to be in tears and choking on her emotions, she admitted lying in Parliament when she gave a riveting personal account of accompanying a woman to file a police report. She apologised to Parliament, to the the woman, to the police, and also to her family.
Ms Indranee said she had “no choice” but to raise a complaint about the breach of privilege based on Ms Khan’s disclosure that she lied in Parliament thrice, as well as her inability to substantiate an allegation she had made about the police.
Ms Indranee then asked for the matter to be referred to the Committee of Privileges. The Speaker agreed.
“Unlike the survivor whose anecdote I shared in this house, I did not have the courage to report my own assault. Yet as a survivor I wanted so deeply to speak up and also share the account I had heard when speaking on the motion, without revealing my own private experience.
“I should not have shared the survivor’s story without her consent, nor should I have said that I accompanied her to the police station when I had not. It was wrong of me to have done so,” she said.
Damage done
While expressing sympathy toward Ms Khan due to her past trauma, Ms Indranee pointed out that the damage done toward survivors of sexual assault, underlining the difficulty victims already face in sharing their stories and being believed.
Gender equality advocacy group AWARE, which had supported Ms Khan after her Aug 3 speech, said publiclythat it was “shocked and disappointed” to learn of her falsehoods.
“Such behaviour only sets back advocacy around sexual violence in Singapore and does a disservice to other survivors, for various reasons,” the group said, adding that it hopes “this incident does not undermine the original matter that Ms Khan was trying to address: the need to deal with sexual assault more sensitively and effectively.”
“What RK has done is to destroy this ‘benefit of the doubt’ we give to victims. That’s the great disservice she has done for the cause of women,” saiD BErTHA HENSON, a former senior editor with the Straits Times.
Activist Kirsten Han wrote, “My worry is that the establishment machinery will now focus all their firepower on how Raeesah lied, but not on the actual, real problem at the heart of the matter. This can only hurt survivors of sexual assault, past, present, and future, and distract our attention from an urgent need to make things better.”
Damage to WP
Many praised Mr Pritam Singh’s speedy response, but some commenters felt that the party needs to remove or have her vacate her seat.
The fallout is a severe blow to the credibiilty of the WP, which has had to fight for every inch of ground it has gained in a country where the ruling People’s Action Party has been in power for 62 years
Commenting on the issue, Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh wrote, “I am still in a bit of shock that anybody could co-opt a story like that. It is not clear to me that Raeesah is aware of the power of her position, as an elected representative of Singaporeans, or of the attendant gravity of her words.
“Perhaps there were too many expectations placed on her—by us and by herself—as independent Singapore’s first female minority opposition candidate; the youngest parliamentarian and champion of the youth; and emerging feminist icon. I can only hope that she one day understands the potentially far-reaching consequences of this debacle.” /TISG