Loh: Raeesah was naive, self-centred and 'lao hong'

The defence concluded its cross-examination of former Workers’ Party (WP) cadre Loh Pei Ying on Oct 18, the fifth day of the trial of WP chief and Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh, and started hearing the prosecution lead evidence from another cadre, Mr Yudhishthra Nathan.

The court left off on Oct 17 after Ms Loh admitted to having lied about the reason for her redaction of a text message in a document submitted to the Committee of Privileges (COP).

Singh is fighting two charges over his alleged lies to a parliamentary committee convened in November 2021 to investigate Ms Raeesah Khan’s untruth in Parliament.

Ms Khan had, on Aug 3, 2021, told Parliament about how she had accompanied a sexual assault victim to a police station, where the victim was treated insensitively. She repeated the claim before the House on Oct 4, before admitting to her lie on Nov 1, 2021.

Here are five key points that came up when Ms Loh and Mr Nathan, who both assisted Ms Khan with her duties as MP, testified:

1. Loh had ‘90%’ intention for Khan to tell the truth

When testifying before the COP in 2021, Ms Loh had said there was on Oct 12, 2021, a consensus among Singh, Mr Nathan and her to tell the truth.

Referring to text messages admitted to court for the trial, Singh’s lawyer Andre Jumabhoy sought to show that Ms Loh and Mr Nathan had wanted Ms Khan to continue lying.

One of the messages read to the court showed that on Oct 7, 2021 – when police sent an e-mail requesting to interview Ms Khan – Ms Loh had suggested that the ground they should probably take was to say Ms Khan was not in contact with the victim and hence could not reveal the information for confidentiality reasons.

“You might want to gather some cases of people who shared their stories with you and present that instead,” she also said in the text message.

The court also heard Mr Nathan’s position was that revealing the truth to Parliament and Singapore would be “extremely damaging”, thus he suggested that Ms Khan continue to lie by misdirecting the police query.

Upon questioning by Mr Jumabhoy, Ms Loh disagreed that the messages were a “clear” indication that she and Mr Nathan had intended for Ms Khan to continue lying.

When pressed, she said that before they had gone to see Singh on Oct 12, 2021, she was “90 per cent” intent on Ms Khan telling the truth.

“I had my reservations also because of the degree of consequences I knew the party would face. I wouldn’t say it was 100 per cent, but I was very close to it,” she added.

Mr Jumabhoy had asked her to ascribe a percentage to her intention.

He then asked if Singh had rejected Mr Nathan’s suggestion at the Oct 12 meeting by saying “Don’t even suggest covering this up with another lie”, which she confirmed.

He then argued that, at least when the meeting started, the only one who thought the truth should come out was Singh. 

Ms Loh disagreed and said: “No. I thought it too.”

2. Loh thought Khan was naive, self-centred and ‘lao hong’

Ms Loh was later cross-examined on the points she presented on Nov 25, 2021, before the WP disciplinary panel (DP) convened to look into Ms Khan’s lying controversy.

Mr Jumabhoy then asked if she had told the DP that Ms Khan was “naive and stupid”, to which Ms Loh said she could not remember if she used those two terms, but she definitely said “naive”.

The panel comprised Singh, WP chairwoman Sylvia Lim and vice-chairman Faisal Manap, and Mr Jumabhoy was referring to Ms Lim’s notes for this meeting when questioning Ms Loh on this.

Pressed on the matter, Ms Loh said the points might have come up in the discussion, but since the words “naive” and “stupid” had come up in Ms Lim’s notes, she could have been describing Mr Nathan and her as “naive and stupid” as well.

Mr Jumabhoy then asked if she had also described Ms Khan as “self-centred” and “lao hong”, a Hokkien phrase. Did the dialect phrase mean that Ms Khan was weak and would crumble with criticism, he asked.

Ms Loh agreed that Ms Khan was sometimes self-centred, but said she would not use the word “weak” to refer to her. As for “lao hong”, she said she used the term because she felt Ms Khan was quite susceptible to criticism.

Asked what she understood by “lao hong” if it is not weak, she replied: “Would you call a lao hong biscuit a weak biscuit? That’s how lao hong is usually used. It’s just not a crispy biscuit.”

Mr Jumabhoy said he was told that in reference to biscuits, “lao hong” means that they are stale. “You are saying Ms Khan is stale,” he added.

Ms Loh disagreed with “stale” and said in Singapore, “lao hong” sometimes means “soft”.

By extension, it refers to someone who buckles “quite easily under pressure”. 

“She’s susceptible to criticism. What people say online about her affects her mental health quite strongly. That’s what I meant,” she added.

Mr Jumabhoy said these opinions do not show a vote of confidence for Ms Khan, yet Ms Loh did not think Ms Khan should be expelled from the party.

Ms Loh said she was entitled to give her “honest, unfiltered candid opinion” at the DP, and that she had wanted Ms Khan to remain in the party so that WP could better control her narrative.

Otherwise, “there’s very little control the party will have over the narrative that will be put forth to the COP”, she said.

Mr Jumabhoy followed up by asking if Ms Loh was concerned that Singh would accuse Mr Nathan and her of conspiring with Ms Khan in creating the lie. 

She said she was “extremely concerned” about that.

“To be more specific, I was extremely concerned on Nov 29, after Ms Khan phoned me in the afternoon and the party leaders strongly recommended that she resign,” she added.

The court also heard that after WP put out a statement announcing Ms Khan’s resignation on Nov 30, 2021, Ms Loh texted Mr Nathan a day later, saying: “I can’t believe our worst nightmare happened.”

Presenting Ms Loh with this message, Mr Jumabhoy asked if her worst nightmare was effectively that Ms Khan could say whatever she wanted to now.

He also asked if her concern was about what Ms Khan would say about Mr Nathan and her. 

Ms Loh disagreed with both statements.

3. Loh deleted many messages after giving evidence to COP

Ms Loh had deleted many text messages after giving evidence before the COP, the court heard.

Mr Jumabhoy was asking her about her text correspondence with Mr Nathan on Dec 2, 2021 – the day she presented her evidence before the COP.

This prompted Deputy Attorney-General Ang Cheng Hock to interject and ask why so much time was being spent on what happened between Ms Loh and Mr Nathan.

This case is not about whether the duo had given false evidence before the COP, Mr Ang said. He said the question at hand is the nature of certain conversations between Singh and Ms Khan specifically on Aug 8 and Oct 3 in 2021.

Mr Jumabhoy replied that the line of questioning was relevant as the witnesses appeared to have aligned their evidence.

Deputy Principal District Judge Luke Tan subsequently allowed the questions while urging Mr Jumabhoy to be clear about his questions.

The court then heard that Ms Loh had deleted messages on her phone after she finished giving her evidence before the COP.

“I deleted many things, including large groups with other volunteers,” she said. 

The court also heard that she obtained permission from then Speaker of Parliament and COP chairman Tan Chuan-Jin to call Mr Nathan in between the Dec 2, 2021, hearing to give him a heads-up on the need for him to testify as well.

But the defence put it to her that, during the phone call, she had gone further than that, despite being informed that what she told the COP should not be discussed.

She agreed, recalling to have told Mr Nathan: “I said I can’t believe Pritam said those things to the press. You have to come here and tell the press.”

She said that she was “very emotional” and angry at that point, as COP member Don Wee, from the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), had given her a wrong piece of information that made her think that Singh had lied.

The information was an article that erroneously stated that Singh knew of Ms Khan’s lie a week after Oct 3, 2021.

“I was concerned that (Singh), quite an influential man, had blatantly lied,” she added.

She said she knew Mr Nathan would be very terrified to be called to testify to the COP, “so I wanted to encourage him to come in and tell the truth, because it was scary, and I wanted to affirm to him that it was a need to be done”.

Another of the messages read in court was one that she sent to a chat group with Ms Khan and Mr Mike Lim, who served as Ms Khan’s legislative assistant from November 2020 to Dec 26, 2021.

In it, Ms Loh had said: “Please don’t tell them we met before COP. This one really, really cannot say.”

The court earlier heard that she, Ms Khan, Mr Nathan and Mr Lim had met on Dec 1 that year, just before they were supposed to give evidence.

Asked at this point if Ms Loh had wanted Ms Khan’s version to align with the testimony she was about to give, she said no.

She also disagreed that in her communications with Mr Nathan on Dec 2 that year, she had told him to tell her version of the truth.

4. Singh ‘afraid’ of Shanmugam, didn’t wish ‘bad karma’ on party: Nathan

One area of discussion during the Oct 12, 2021, meeting between Singh, Ms Loh and Mr Nathan was about the change in the party’s strategy, specifically what made them now want Ms Khan to come clean.

Mr Nathan, currently a PhD student at a local university, said Singh told him he was worried that the Government might already have evidence or would somehow know Ms Khan had lied in Parliament and that the anecdote was untrue.

“My sense at the time was that he was very afraid of (Law and Home Affairs) Minister K. Shanmugam and the Government,” he told the court.

Mr Nathan also remembered Singh saying that if the party were to keep the lie, it would get “bad karma” for it, he added.

Mr Nathan said he asked Singh then if he would be prepared media-wise – to field questions from journalists who would certainly ask whether he stood by Ms Khan and what she did in Parliament – and the WP chief had “kind of waved his hand” and called it a “simple matter”.

He also recalled informing Singh that this time round, it would not just be supporters of the PAP or those in the middle ground who would criticise the party, but also WP’s own members, volunteers and supporters, who had no idea that the leaders knew about Ms Khan’s lie.

At one point, he also asked Singh if he had consulted former WP chief Low Thia Khiang on his view of the matter.

Mr Nathan said he had asked as Mr Low was someone whose judgment he trusted very much, and someone he knew as being “very principled” and seasoned as a politician.

Singh responded that he had consulted Mr Low, and it was the elder’s view that Ms Khan should come clean as soon as possible, and that Ms Khan “still had time before the next GE” to shore up confidence from the ground.

5. Nathan thought WP’s reputation would take an ‘unrecoverable hit’

Between Oct 4 and Oct 12, 2021, Mr Nathan was still vacillating between whether Ms Khan should maintain her lie and stick to the “party position”, or whether she should come clean in some way, he told the court.

At that time, he had thought that the party position was that Ms Khan should maintain her lie as she had sent him a text message conveying the WP leaders’ wish for them to take the information “to the grave”.

Given that Mr Shanmugam had just raised questions around the anecdote at the Oct 4 Parliament sitting, Mr Nathan said he was afraid of what coming clean would mean for WP’s reputation and what others might think of them as loyal members of the party.

Asked to elaborate on his fear, he said he was afraid the reputation of WP “would take an unrecoverable hit” if Ms Khan were to come clean.

Later recounting the events on Oct 12, 2021, Mr Nathan said he was in school when he got into a phone call with Ms Khan late in the afternoon, where she told him that Singh and Ms Lim wanted her to come clean.

In that call, Ms Khan also mentioned that the party leaders were not sure if she should mention the context that she was a sexual assault victim when she came clean, he noted.

Mr Nathan told the court he remembered his response to her was that it “sounds like political suicide” to have an MP go to Parliament and say, ‘Hey everyone, I lied’, and not even explain how she ended up lying in the first place.

He also was made to recount the meeting he had with Ms Loh and Singh on Aug 10, 2021, where they reportedly discussed Ms Khan’s Aug 3 lie to Parliament, as well as her experience with sexual assault.

Asked how he knew they were discussing the lie, Mr Nathan said: “I do remember (Singh) saying something to the effect of conservative religious men in our society would not like to have an MP that was sexually assaulted.

“He said it in passing, but he said it nonetheless.”