Be Transparent about Transparency
1. What does it mean to be “transparent”? This is a question that requires our urgent attention following accusations by Mr. Pritam Singh, Leader of the Opposition and Secretary-General of the Worker’s Party, that the government has been “less than upfront and forthright with Singaporeans”.
2. It is difficult to establish a single definition of transparency that would be appropriate for all circumstances. For example, when it relates to matters involving national security, unmitigated transparency would result in the transmission of sensitive information into the public domain which may have a disproportionately damaging impact on the country.
3. On the other hand, when it relates to public figures, “[p]eople who come into politics have to be prepared for their private lives to come under scrutiny, and cannot say that their private and public lives are completely separate”. This means that some private matters which would ordinarily be kept private may, depending on the circumstances, become a matter of public interest and hence susceptible to disclosure.
4. Given that the appropriate level of transparency is dependent on the factual circumstances, it may be unwise to attempt a one-size-fits-all approach. What is more useful is to perhaps look at what transparency is not.
Transparency is not about fulfilling public curiosity
5. Often, we make the mistake of conflating the concept of “public interest” with what the public is interested in. The former is a broad concept that may sometimes be simplified as “for the good of the public”, for which government policies and decisions set out to achieve. The latter is simply public curiosity, fulfilment of which may not further any cognisable policy objectives. Transparency is not concerned with fulfilling public curiosity. Transparency should concern itself with the advancement of the public interest. This is an important distinction we must appreciate.
Transparency, even when warranted, is not absolute
6. This is a sensible principle that is briefly discussed above. For example, the quantum of the defence budget is public knowledge. However, certain information such as the exact distribution of that budget, the amount spent on developing new means and methods of warfare are confidential. Indeed, citizens expect that information to be closely guarded because releasing that information may undermine a country’s defence strategy.
7. It is irresponsible to demand that all information of public interest be made publicly available without due regard given to other legitimate concerns such as propriety, security, privacy, amongst others.
Transparency does not demand immediate disclosure
8. In the context of government, a piece of information may engage the interests of multiple stakeholders. If so, each stakeholder needs to be given time to review if the disclosure of information would adversely affect any interests which they are dutybound to safeguard. Releasing information without giving relevant stakeholders sufficient time to conduct their reviews is reckless.
9. Even if there are no other stakeholders involved (which is a very remote possibility given the interconnectedness of government departments and agencies), the party in possession of information needs to determine the appropriate forum, medium, and extent of information that may be released. All these take time.
Just because I know does not mean I am entitled to disclose
10. The party in possession of information is not automatically entitled to disclose that information. It is therefore erroneous to assume that public office holders, merely by virtue of their appointment, have unconstrained authority to disclose information which they may be in possession of.
11. Ministries, agencies, and individuals may be granted access to information to enable them to perform their duties. However, they are not granted carte blanche to disclose that information to all and sundry. The owner of that information can legitimately circumscribe disclosure of the information by persons who have access to them, and set conditions for their disclosure, if such disclosure is warranted.
Mr. Singh’s claim that the government has not been transparent is utterly baseless
12. Having established the above parameters, we can now turn our attention to Mr. Singh’s allegation that the government has been “less than upfront and forthright with Singaporeans”. Mr. Singh purports to support his allegation with three examples.
13. First, Mr. Singh claims that “the public was not informed forthwith that CPIB had been instructed to look into the Ridout Road rentals by two ministers”. As PM Lee said: “where Ministers decide to live, whether they want to rent, whether they want to buy, these are personal choices. Thus I see nothing wrong with Ministers renting properties from SLA”.
14. PM Lee also “did not believe there was wrongdoing involved. [He] had every confidence that [his] Ministers, and the SLA officials who dealt with them, would have done the right things, and handled the rentals properly”. CPIB’s involvement was at the request of Ministers Shanmugam and Balakrishnan. This investigation was not initiated because CPIB had obtained evidence of wrongdoing through its own checks. As it turns out, the Ministers were fully exonerated by CPIB, after subjecting themselves voluntarily to CPIB’s investigations. The public is certainly interested in the matter, but the involvement of CPIB is not per se a matter of public interest.
15. Second, Mr. Singh alleges that there is “considerable public disquiet about the CPIB releasing a statement on the 12th of July which stated that Minister Iswaran was assisting with investigations while omitting to disclose the fact that Minister Iswaran has been arrested the day before”.
16. The owners of the information relating to Mr. Iswaran’s arrest is the CPIB. As Minister Chan Chun Sing explained, CPIB’s reason for not announcing that Minister Iswaran had been arrested on 12 July was because it wanted to establish more facts, and to hear Minister Iswaran’s side of the story. Once it made that decision, PM Lee and DPM Lawrence Wong took reference from CPIB’s statement “because ministers, including the prime minister, should not reveal more than what the law enforcement agencies are prepared to disclose”.
17. Third, Mr. Singh alleges that the government “took almost 9 months before it disclosed to Singaporeans that the Singapore Police Force sought to collect TraceTogether data for investigation in May 2020 even as the PAP continued to assert right through the rest of the year that TraceTogether was only to be used for contact tracing”.
18. This has nothing to do with transparency. Why? Because Mr. Singh got the facts wrong. The time taken by the government to acknowledge that TraceTogether data could be used for the purposes of police investigation was extremely brief. The issue was highlighted to Minister Balakrishnan in end-October 2020, confirmations were carried out by his staff as to the law in November 2020, and the issue was discussed in Parliament at the earliest available opportunity, which was January 2021. There is no delay, and a case for lack of transparency is simply not made out.
19. Singh’s demand for transparency ought to be contrast with his approaches to the scandals that have rocked the Worker’s Party. Let us review them.
Take it to the grave – Mr. Singh’s advice to Ms. Raeesah Khan
20. On 3 August 2021, Ms. Raeesah Khan, then a Member of Parliament for the Sengkang Group Representation Constituency, told an untrue anecdote in Parliament. She confessed her wrongdoing on 7 August 2021 to Mr. Singh. On 8 August 2021, Ms. Khan confessed her wrongdoing to Mr. Singh, Ms. Sylvia Lim and Mr. Muhamad Faisal Manap in a meeting organized by Mr. Singh in his home. According to Ms. Khan, they advised her that the best thing to do is “to retain the narrative” that she had already given in Parliament on 3 August 2021. Ms. Khan also stated that Mr. Singh had told her, in the presence of Ms. Lim and Mr. Faisal, that she should take the matter “to the grave”.
21. When Ms. Khan eventually came clean in Parliament and admitted that she lied, the Worker’s Party set up a disciplinary panel to investigate Ms. Khan’s conduct. That panel comprised of Mr. Singh, Ms. Lim, and Mr. Faisal, the same three senior Party leaders who are themselves implicated in guiding Ms. Khan’s conduct, following her lie on 3 August 2021.
22. Needless to say, the patent lack of transparency in the Worker’s Party’s, and more particularly, Mr. Singh’s approach to the matter, is palpable. In fact, it can be said that Mr. Singh’s advice to Ms. Raeesah Khan to take the matter “to the grave” is the most serious affront to transparency, by any yardstick of measure. This is further compounded by the fact that the disciplinary panel formed to investigate Ms. Khan’s conduct is not a case of “own self check own self”, but an egregious case of “own self cover own self”.
23. It should amaze everyone that Mr. Singh could now summon up the courage to lecture the government on transparency given his role in perpetuating Ms. Khan’s wrongdoing, and the fact that he is now under investigations for lying on affirmation to the Committee of Privileges.
24. Finally, it is also horrifying to note that Mr. Singh persisted in directly referencing Ms. Khan’s traumatic experience involving sexual assault, despite her appeal that it not be directly referenced. We will let the words of Ms. Loh Peiying and Mr. Yudhishthra Nathan, former cadre members of the Worker’s Party, speak for themselves:
We watched with regret Pritam Singh’s statements made in Parliament today. As far as we know, Raeesah Khan constantly maintained to everyone involved that she preferred not to have the ‘r’ word mentioned, and that she preferred her traumatic experiences to be described more generically as sexual assault.
The revelation by Pritam Singh to the public about what happened to her in detail, was without her consent, and against her repeated, explicit request for her privacy to be respected. We find it extremely insensitive, and were horrified to witness this disrespect while watching the COP videos and again today in Parliament.
We strongly disapprove of this behaviour. Raeesah Khan made a severe mistake. Still, it does not mean that basic human decency should not be extended to her because of her error.
See No Evil, Hear No Evil – disregarding a witness to Leon Perera’s and Nicole Seah’s extramarital affair
25. When Mr. Frankie Wong, Mr. Leon Perera’s driver of over a decade, informed Mr. Singh of the extramarital affair that Mr. Perera carried on with Ms. Nicole Seah, he was met with a muted response. According to Mr. Singh, he had not pursued the matter because “[t]here was no evidence or corroborating information to support the allegation”, and both Mr. Perera and Ms. Seah denied the affair. Well, there was no further evidence uncovered because Mr. Frankie Wong was neither asked to come forward to be interviewed, nor was he asked to provide further corroborative evidence to support his claims. Mr. Singh also said that Mr. Perera was involved in a dispute with Mr. Frankie Wong at the material time, seemingly to suggest that there was possible bad faith on Mr. Frankie Wong’s part.
26. Let us just engage in a little thought experiment. Imagine that you were walking along a quiet alley and was robbed at knife point. You take a good look at the perpetrator and recognised him to be an old acquaintance whom you have a grievance against. You go to the police station and make a report. The officer notes your complaint but does not interview you. The officer also does not ask if you can provide any further evidence to support your complaint. The only investigative work done by the officer is to ask the perpetrator if he committed the offence. Well, he denies it.
27. Based on the above, the officer ignores your complaint. The reason? Other than your report, there was no further corroborating evidence (because the officer did not make any attempt to look for it), and the perpetrator denied it. Furthermore, they note that you have a grievance against the perpetrator, which makes your complaint somewhat suspicious. Would you accept that the officer had acted properly? Did he deal with your complaint in a transparent manner?
28. The approach taken by Mr. Singh and the Worker’s Party to the Mr. Perera’s and Ms. Seah’s extramarital affair is shockingly cavalier. Are these the actions of someone qualified to pontificate about transparency?
So why is Mr. Singh attacking the government?
29. Given that Mr. Singh’s conduct and response to the various scandals which have troubled his Party is far from satisfactory, why is he spending time attacking the government?
30. In this author’s opinion, it has to do with the simple fact that it is always easier to distract and deflect than to face your demons. Any keen observer of local politics will be able to tell you that the Worker’s Party is suffering from a deficit of trust and Mr. Singh’s leadership as Secretary-General of the Worker’s Party is now under scrutiny. Of the 10 Worker’s Party MPs who were elected to Parliament following the 2020 election, two had resigned (Mr. Perera and Ms. Khan), accounting for 20% of the Worker’s Party headcount in Parliament. A further member of their CEC, Ms. Seah, also resigned in the aftermath of her extramarital affair with Mr. Perera.
31. Singh is himself embroiled in the case involving Aljunied-Hougang Town Council and is under police investigations in relation to his conduct before the Committee of Privileges which was looking into the lies told by Ms. Khan in Parliament. In the aftermath of this matter, the Worker’s Party expelled Assoc. Prof. Daniel Goh for ostensibly criticising the Party’s approach in relation to Ms. Khan.
32. In relation to the extramarital affair between Mr. Perera and Ms. Seah, Mr. Singh chose to disbelieve Mr. Perera’s personal driver and did not conduct any investigations, claiming that the driver’s information was uncorroborated. When pressed by Mr Vikram Nair, MP for Sembawang GRC, if Mr. Singh had conveyed the need to collate further corroborative evidence to the driver, Mr. Singh admitted that he did not.
33. President Harry S. Truman once criticised his political opponents for their approach which he described as “If you can’t convince them, confuse them”. As the Leader of the Opposition and Secretary-General of the Worker’s Party, Mr. Singh would be well-advised to steer clear of this stratagem. It does neither him nor his Party any credit. Instead of wasting his time lobbing shoddy potshots at the government, he should do what his Party expects of him – lead. This starts with internal reflection, that means taking a hard, honest look at himself, his leadership, and the state of the Party under his governance.