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Former Workers’ Party (WP) Member of Parliament Yaw Shin Leong has refuted the party's chief Pritam Singh in a Facebook post on Dec. 6, after years of lying low.

Yaw disputed the comments Singh made during a Dec. 2 press conference.

What Singh said

Singh said during the press conference that Yaw was dismissed from the opposition party in 2012 because he did not hold himself accountable to both the party and the public.

The incident in 2012 referred to allegations that Yaw had an extramarital affair, following his election to the Hougang SMC seat in the 2011 general election.

What Yaw said

Yaw, who now goes by the alias “Amos Rao”, wrote that Singh’s assertion was not true.

He now claims he had “accounted the situation candidly” then to the party’s then-secretary general, Low Thia Khiang, even before the allegations of his affair had surfaced.

He then “immediately accounted” to both Low and party chairman Sylvia Lim when the allegations became public.

Yaw claimed in his latest post: “And I was advised to stay silent.”

Yaw said he kept silent

He also claimed that he kept silent and resigned from the party’s central executive committee (CEC) as he “placed party before self” and in order to “minimise the fallout”.

This allowed the party to fill in the narrative.

“My intention was to give WP CEC a blank cheque to paint the narrative required. To facilitate the process, I travelled out of Singapore voluntarily,” he said.

Yaw said he was then expelled from the party on Feb. 14, 2012.

The reason given then was for “breaking the faith, trust and expectations of the party and people”.

In response to Pritam, Yaw said: “I am okay with this narrative, but I am not okay with what Pritam said, for I did account myself.”

You can read Yaw's full post here:

Moments ago, an ex-WP cadre pointed to me the video recordings of Workers’ Party chief Pritam Singh’s press conference held on Dec 2, 2021. At the 9.35 mark, Pritam commented that:

‘Yaw Shin Leong did not account himself to the party after the allegations were made. I think he did not address the media, did not address the party. The party was willing to give him some space to get himself organized, but this just went on and it went on, to a point where it was unreasonable conduct and this was not acceptable. And so, the party took the decision to fire him, to sack him.”

The above is not true. Even before the allegations have surfaced, I accounted the situation candidly to WP Secretary General LTK. When the allegations surfaced, I immediately accounted to both WP Secretary General LTK and Chairman Sylvia Lim. And I was advised to stay silent.

I placed party first before self and to minimize the fallout, I kept silent and resigned from WP CEC. My intention was to give WP CEC a blank cheque to paint the narrative required. To facilitate the process, I travelled out of Singapore voluntarily.

On 14th Feb 2012, I was expelled from WP for 'breaking the faith, trust & expectations of the party and people'. I am okay with this narrative, but I am not okay with what Pritam said, for I did account myself.

I am not entertaining any media queries and will leave the above as it is.

Background

Singh was asked by a member of the media during the Dec. 2 press conference about the 2012 incident involving Yaw.

The reporter had asked about the time it took, about one month, for the WP to move on Yaw, which was shorter than the time it took for them to move on Raeesah Khan, which was almost three months.

Singh replied that the two incidents are different in nature, as Raeesah's episode "occurred in Parliament", and "the parliamentary record had to be set right".

The press conference was called after Raeesah resigned from the party and as the elected MP of Sengkang GRC on Nov. 30.

This was after she confessed that she had lied in Parliament during a speech she gave on Aug. 3.

Top photo via Yawning Bread & Amos Rao

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