At a live TV forum last night, People's Action Party's (PAP) Lawrence Wong played historian and poked Singapore Democratic Party's (SDP) Chee Soon Juan for something that happened almost 20 years ago.

Members of the various political parties (National Solidarity Party, SDP, Reform Party, SingFirst, PAP and Workers' Party) were invited to the engage in some seemingly friendly debate of each party's directions.

And it was getting a bit vanilla until Wong brought out the History Channel in him and commented on what happened in 1996.

"It's also about character. And character means having integrity, having honesty to keep Singapore politics clean and corruption free. Integrity and honesty also means being able to not gloss over tough issues. Being upfront with Singaporeans and electorate about difficult trade-offs to be made for the country and not look at politically expedient solutions that may be harmful to Singapore's interests in the long-term. And I think character, if indeed there are people who fall short, it is our duty to highlight this to Singaporeans. And I want to mention one point, and I know Dr Chee Soon Juan would prefer me not to dwell on this but it is on public record. I remembered what happened in 1996, because I was just starting work in the civil service. Dr Chee made a written and oral representation to a select committee in parliament and eventually the committee found out that the data presented was false and he was charged for lying, for misleading the public and also found later to be in contempt of parliament."

Check out the video here:

And what happened in 96?

Well, that escalated quickly.

After probably thinking "what the hell happened back there?", Chee responded on Facebook and commented that the poke "was a bolt out of the blue." (not sure whether pun was intended).

Read his full post here:

Top photo from Lawrence Wong Facebook page.