Key moments from Raeesah Khan's testimony on Day 2 of Pritam Singh's trial

SINGAPORE: Ms Raeesah Khan, the former Workers' Party (WP) Member of Parliament (MP), testified for a second day in the trial of WP secretary-general Pritam Singh on Tuesday (Oct 15).

Ms Khan, 30, is the first witness in Singh's trial over alleged false testimony he gave to a Committee of Privileges (COP) that was investigating a lie she told in parliament in August 2021.

On her second day on the witness stand, Singh's lawyer Andre Jumabhoy opened his cross-examination of Ms Khan, seeking to cast her as a habitual liar.

Here are five key moments from her testimony.

FELT "DEFEATED AND BETRAYED" BY PARTY LEADERS

Ms Khan said she felt "very defeated and betrayed" at a Nov 29, 2021 meeting with a WP disciplinary panel comprising Singh, party chair Sylvia Lim and vice-chair Faisal Manap.

The WP convened the disciplinary panel to look into Ms Khan's conduct after she had come clean to the public about her lie in parliament.

During her first meeting with the panel on Nov 8, 2021, Ms Khan said that instead of questioning her about the lie, the three party leaders criticised her performance as an MP, and she was not prepared for this.

Under examination by the prosecution, Ms Khan said she was shocked that the panel found fault with her for not filing enough parliamentary questions, and not being present in parliament or on the ground.

Ms Khan requested to meet the panel a second time as she wanted to share more about the challenges she faced as an MP and where she felt she had succeeded.

She said of this second meeting on Nov 29, 2021: "I felt very defeated and betrayed that the people that I look up to the most and trusted the most kind of turned around and used the disciplinary panel to criticise me."

The party leaders used the panel "to almost pretend that they had not been guiding me" on the matter of her lie in parliament, she added.

KHAN RESIGNED DUE TO LACK OF SUPPORT

After the second session with the disciplinary panel was when Ms Khan felt that the party would "definitely" ask her to resign. 

She resigned from the WP and as an MP on Nov 30, 2021. 

When asked why she decided to resign, Ms Khan told the court that she had reflected on the fact that she had lost the support of the party leadership, and did not have the Sengkang team's support.  

She informed the party's central executive committee (CEC) of her decision during a meeting, according to the prosecution. 

During this meeting, she told the CEC that she was "very sad to resign" because she "really loved the groundwork and meeting residents". 

"I LIED TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY"

Early in his cross-examination, Mr Jumabhoy said Ms Khan told lies "non-stop", whether in her false anecdote in parliament, in her evidence to the COP or in court proceedings.

"You are in fact a liar, right?" he asked her. "Yes, I've lied," she replied. He continued: "You tell lies non-stop, don't you?"

When Ms Khan did not agree with this, he took her through text messages she exchanged with Singh after the Aug 3, 2021 speech where she told the false anecdote about accompanying a sexual assault survivor to a police station.

For example, when Singh asked her for more details that day, Ms Khan claimed the event took place "three years ago, in the early part of the year" and that she met the survivor "at the bus stop near the Bedok police station".

"You're adding more facts to support a lie," said Mr Jumabhoy. "So it's a lie heaped upon a lie. And then it's going to be wrapped up in more lies, isn't it?"

Ms Khan replied yes to his statements.

The lawyer also said it was "pretty impressive" that Ms Khan had managed to lie multiple times in one message. "I wouldn't call it impressive, I would call it fear," she said.

When Mr Jumabhoy asked whom else Ms Khan had lied to about her false anecdote, she said: "Because I made that speech in parliament, I lied to the whole country."

"YOU SEEM TO BE ADDING NEW THINGS"

During the bulk of the cross-examination on Tuesday afternoon, Mr Jumabhoy focused his questions on seeming inconsistencies between what Ms Khan said to the COP and her testimony in court. 

He asked Ms Khan why she told the COP that Ms Loh Pei Ying, her former secretarial assistant, had asked her to tell the truth, while in court, Ms Khan said that Ms Loh had not given her any such advice.

This drew two interventions from Deputy Principal District Judge Luke Tan, who pointed out that the evidence Mr Jumabhoy referred to did not suggest that the advice came from Ms Loh.

Ms Khan later testified in court that she could not recall Ms Loh or ex-WP member Yudhishthra Nathan ever having advised her to tell the truth. 

Mr Jumabhoy also accused Ms Khan of adding new information to her recollection of events in court. 

He referred to Ms Khan's testimony on Monday that at the end of the Aug 8, 2021 meeting, Ms Lim had asked her if her father was waiting in the car outside Singh's house. He pointed out that Ms Khan had not mentioned this before. 

"It's been three years now, and you seem to be adding new things three years after the event," he said.

"How have you gone from having no recollection and never mentioning what (Ms Lim) says to now suddenly coming up with that?"

Ms Khan said she might not have mentioned this in her testimony to the COP, but could have included it in her statement to police.

ATTEMPT TO IMPEACH KHAN'S CREDIT

Towards the end of Tuesday's proceedings, Mr Jumabhoy sought to impeach Ms Khan's credit as a witness, and she was asked to step out of the court during these arguments. 

The defence raised two possible material contradictions to support the application, comparing Ms Khan's police statement on May 12, 2022 to what she said in her court testimony on Monday.

Judge Tan did not make a decision on the application by the time the hearing adjourned, but allowed Mr Jumabhoy to continue questioning Ms Khan on two answers she gave in her police statement when the hearing resumes on Wednesday.

These relate to her account of her meeting with Singh on Oct 3, 2021, and whether Singh had said he thought Ms Khan's lie would be brought up again or not in parliament.

On Monday, Ms Khan had testified that Singh "something along the lines of – I don't think the issue will come up but if it does come up he's not going to judge me for continuing with the narrative".

But in her police statement, she had said that Singh said "knowing them, they might bring it up again", referring to her lie.