SINGAPORE: Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat on Tuesday (Nov 5) called on the Workers’ Party (WP) to “take action” after a High Court judge found its leaders, Mr Low Thia Khiang and Ms Sylvia Lim, liable in a landmark case investigating misuse of town council funds.
Given that it has been almost four weeks since the Oct 11 judgement, the Opposition Party “cannot stay silent”, he said in an hour-long speech to move a parliamentary motion on the governance of the Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC).
AdvertisementAdvertisement“Close to four weeks have passed since the judgment was published. In all that time, the Workers’ Party have said nothing,” Mr Heng, who is also Finance Minister, said in Parliament.
“They have not apologised for the shortcomings that the Courts – and before the Courts, AGO (Auditor-General's Office) and KPMG – have established. They have not accounted for their dishonesties and untruths.
“Nor have they have said whether they intend to put right the many wrongs that the Court has uncovered, and if so how,” he added in moving the motion.
The motion, citing the court judgement which found the WP leaders “had acted dishonestly and in breach of their fiduciary duties” with conduct that “lacked integrity and candour”, called on the House to affirm “the vital importance of MPs maintaining high standards of integrity and accountability”.
AdvertisementAdvertisementIt also called on the two MPs to recuse themselves from all financial matters at AHTC, where Ms Lim remains vice-chairman and Mr Low is an elected member.
“All that this House is asking, is for Ms Sylvia Lim and Mr Low Thia Khiang to recuse themselves from dealing with or having oversight over financial matters, until the court case is concluded,” said Mr Heng, while adding that “this is the least they can do” given the court’s findings.
The Deputy Prime Minister also directed his questions at AHTC’s chairman Faisal Manap and other WP members.
Specifically, he asked Mr Faisal if he would, at the minimum, apologise to the residents of Aljunied and Hougang for letting them down and remove Ms Lim from her post as vice-chairman, among other things.
“An apology would be the first step, a belated recognition that they had let residents down, and an intention to put things right,” he said.
Turning to the other WP MPs and Non-constituency MPs, Mr Heng asked: “Will they at long last be conducting their own investigation? Or will they continue to duck, dodge and deny?”
“If nothing is done from now till the appeal is concluded, we will be forced to conclude that the Workers’ Party, by its inaction, in fact endorses the dishonest conduct and the breach of the fiduciary duties that has already occurred, and is complicit in the wrongdoing.”
Explaining why he is moving the motion, Mr Heng said this is because “integrity is of the utmost importance in elected officials”.
He noted that Singapore has succeeded only because it has maintained a culture of honesty and integrity in the public service.
“Those who participate in politics must be honest, upright people who can be trusted to uphold the public interest, speak the truth even at a cost to themselves, and admit their mistakes when they have done wrong.
“They have to uphold these principles even when it is politically inconvenient to do so and we need to do this, whether you are a government or opposition MP, whether you represent a constituency in Parliament, or are an NCMP or NMP,” added Mr Heng.
[h=3]READ: AHTC case: What you need to know about the High Court judgment[/h]KEY ISSUES IN AHTC’S CASE
Tuesday’s parliamentary motion marked the latest in the long-running AHTC saga.
Setting out at length the developments over the past eight years, Mr Heng highlighted a number of key issues at the heart of the case.
First, that the WP had “appointed their friends to manage the Town Council, at a higher cost than the previous managing agent”, a decision which caused the Town Council to incur “deficits of up to S$2 million by the third year”.
Citing a Court judgment, Mr Heng noted that “there had never been any intention to call a tender in the first place”.
“The two WP MPs had already decided on FM Solutions and Services (FMSS) within days of the 2011 General Election… They also admitted that they had rejected other parties who were interested in providing Managing Agent services,” said the Deputy Prime Minister.
All town councils are required to call for an open tender to contract Managing Agents.
“To guarantee FMSS’s appointment, Ms Sylvia Lim and Mr Low Thia Khiang waived the tender, even though the law required it,” said Mr Heng.
To conceal the “real facts” of the case, Ms Lim and Mr Low “manipulated the circumstances of this appointment, even to the extent of misleading their fellow Town Councillors”, he added.
He noted that Ms Lim and the WP Town Council Chairman “hid details of the transactions with their friends” in 2014, and “refused to give the documents and information to their own auditors”.
In addition, they “knowingly allowed Mr Pritam Singh to mislead Parliament”, said Mr Heng.
He referred to Mr Singh’s declaration that FMSS was “kept at an arm’s length” from the Town Council.
“We now know this to be false. The Court found that How Weng Fan had been heavily involved since early May 2011,” said Mr Heng.
Ms How Weng Fan had been the general manager of the AHTC, and also held the position of director with the FMSS.
The WP had also failed to produce “critical documents” to the Auditor-General’s Office (AGO), he added.
When Parliament debated the 2015 AGO report which “uncovered serious shortcomings”, “the WP MPs - and Ms Sylvia Lim in particular - made excuses”, said Mr Heng.
“I do not know what they were expecting. Perhaps they felt that somehow the public would forget and give them a free pass since they were an opposition party. They were not used to running a Group Representative Constituency (GRC), so the public would ‘give chance’?”
As a result, Mr Heng said residents have borne the consequences of what the WP Town Councillors have done.
He pointed to how under the management of FMSS, the Town Council ran deficits of up to S$2 million by the third year.
On the other hand, FMSS made a profit of $3.2 million in their second year.
Yet, even after all this has been made public, the WP has stayed silent, said Mr Heng.
“Maybe they hope that Singaporeans will forget or forgive them,” he told the House.
“Playing the victim or the underdog may be par for the course in politics, but there are important matters at stake – public funds, residents’ monies, the estates that Singaporeans come home to. We cannot sweep things under the carpet.”
OPPOSITION MUST HOLD THEMSELVES TO SAME STANDARDS
Mr Heng said the Government has always taken any accusations of dishonesty against political leaders “very seriously”.
And the fourth-generation leaders of the People’s Action Party (PAP) intend to continue maintaining the high standards it has achieved and upheld for so many years since the party first formed the government in 1959.
He added: “If any PAP Minister or MP is accused of lying, the Prime Minister and I would do a thorough investigation. And if they were found dishonest, serious consequences would inevitably follow.”
The court has since made “very serious and severe statements” about Mr Low and Ms Lim, by concluding that their conduct of town council matters “lacked candour and transparency, and that they had not acted honestly”.
“Imagine if a court had made such findings against PAP town councillors. Is it even conceivable that a PAP MP whom the Court has described in these terms, can remain in the Town Council, and continue handling public funds, as if nothing has happened?
"At the very least, he would have been asked to go on leave pending any effort to clear his name through an Appeal," he said.
He added: "What sort of questions would the Workers’ Party be asking the PAP? What sort of demands would they be making of the Government?"
To that, Mr Heng said: “The Opposition must hold themselves to the same standards that they rightly impose on the Government."
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