Less than 18 months after making historic electoral gains, Singapore’s largest opposition party, the Workers’ Party (WP), has been shaken by a controversy that threatens its credibility and puts its leadership at risk of being sanctioned with fines or jail by the city-state’s legislature, where the ruling party commands a supermajority.
The scandal has dominated political headlines in Singapore since November 1, when WP lawmaker Raeesah Khan admitted she lied in parliament about accompanying a sexual assault victim to a police station where the latter was allegedly mocked and treated insensitively by a police officer handling her complaint.
After sharing the anecdote in August during a debate on women’s empowerment, Raeesah came clean three months later, confessing she did not follow the victim to the police station, but heard the account in a sexual assault survivors support group she was part of, nor did she have the victim’s consent to share the account publicly.
Raeesah, 28, said she attended the group session because she had been sexually assaulted at the age of 18 while studying abroad. Telling the complete story, she implied in a tearful speech, would have required publicly outing herself as a sexual assault victim, an experience she had not told her parents about at the time.
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Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.
