Pritam Singh’s trial has completed a week and is scheduled to run for another week. The double standards are apparent to everyone. Why, to take one example, was Tan Chuan Jin, the charming man who was captured swearing at an Opposition MP for suggesting that more could be spent on the welfare of poor Singaporeans, not prosecuted for failing to declare he was having an affair with an MP from the ruling party which should have surely rendered him ineligible to hold the office of Speaker. As I wrote in my blog, he took his girlfriend on at least one overseas Parliamentary trip with the bill met by the taxpayer or a foreign government.

Using the courts to take out political opponents is of course something I have direct experience of. My father was disqualified from Parliament in 1986 after he was convicted of an invented offence of diverting money from creditors of the Workers Party. For background the creditors were from the PAP, the result of an unsuccessful defamation suit that the WP had brought against a PAP MP for saying that it received $600,00 from abroad before the 1972 election, a lie that was repeated everywhere on state media. JBJ was unable to appeal his conviction to the Privy Council because the AG had started the judicial process in the subordinate courts. However after he was struck off from practising as a lawyer my father was able to appeal his striking off to the Privy Council which ruled famously in 1988 that he had suffered a grievous injustice, being convicted of a nonexistent offence. They called on the Government to do the right thing and issue a pardon which of course they declined to do. JBJ was unable to stand again till 1997 since the PAP called an election in 1991 just before his suspension from running for Parliament ran out and then didn’t call another one for six years.

The prosecution isn’t asking the judge for a custodial sentence, only a fine, which is a maximum of $7,000 for each charge. If Singh were fined a cumulative total of $10,000 or more then he would be disqualified and lose his seat in Parliament. The consensus seems to be that the courts won’t fine him enough to disqualify him but I’m sceptical that is too sanguine. Iswaran was given double the jail time asked for by the prosecution by the judge who felt he’d got off too lightly. That might set a precedent for the judge in Singh’s case to impose a much harsher fine than everyone is expecting or even give him a term of imprisonment.

Even if the fine isn’t enough to disqualify Singh it’s hard to see how he can justify not resigning if he is convicted. WP made a rod for their own back by forcing Raesah Khan to resign, even though Singh, Sylvia Lim and Faisal Manap had known about her lie since 8 August 2021 and had allegedly allowed her to make her own decision as to whether to admit the lie in Parliament. According to her testimony in court, much of the Disciplinary Panel hearing was taken up with criticising her for alleged faults not connected with her lies in Parliament, such as poor punctuality and not doing enough work on the ground. It appears they made clear that they found it impossible to work with her if she continued as an MP. If what she says is true then she was made a scapegoat only when it proved impossible for her to maintain the lie. No allowance was made, either by the government or by WP, for the fact that she was a sexual assault victim and therefore almost certainly suffering from PTSD.

Whatever the outcome of the case, the fact that Raesah Khan’s seat has been left vacant for nearly three years, and possibly four by the time the election is finally called, illustrates how, far from ensuring minority representation, the GRC system actually does the opposite. After Halimah Yaacob resigned in 2017 to become the selected President, her seat in the Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC was left vacant until the 2020 GE. Currently the seats of Raesah Khan, Tharman, Leon Perera and Iswaran remain vacant till the next election because they are in GRCs. How then can the GRC system be about ensuring minority representation when so many minority seats in GRCs remain unfilled? Why should the minority constituents in that GRC be treated as second class and denied representation for potentially up to five years? How can that be called by any stretch of the imagination democratic?

The GRC system illustrates the PAP’s utter contempt for Singaporeans and is a prime example of the way, aided by an Elections Department that is under the control of the PM, it has perverted the electoral system to entrench themselves in power. It’s time to end it now and return to the system of only having Single Member Constituencies (SMCs). The second best solution would be to carve out the seat of any member who resigns or dies from the GRC so that a by-election can be held. Neither is likely to happen as long as the PAP remain in power.

Published by kjeyaretnam

I'm a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That's why I've never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I'm quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don't work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I'm a liberal. I'm not sure what the middle think of me. I don't think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I'm a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I'm not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean. View all posts by kjeyaretnam