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People's Action Party (PAP) MP Lim Biow Chuan, weighed in on the Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC) court decision, highlighting that the Court of Appeal ruled that several Workers' Party (WP) town councillors were found not to be acting in good faith with regard to a multi-million dollar contract.
"The (Court of Appeal) said that there was conflict of interest and it carried on for 3 years," wrote Lim, who is the Coordinating Chair of PAP Town Councils, in a Nov. 9 Facebook post.
In the ruling, the court noted that it was clear that the town councillors were aware of the existence of the managing agent directors' (How Weng Fan and the late Danny Loh) potential conflict of interest as early as May 19, 2011, but failed to properly address such conflict.
In its decision, the court noted,
"This was not mere negligence. This is because it is clear that the Town Councillors were aware of the existence of Ms How’s and Mr Loh’s potential conflict of interest as early as 19 May 2011, but failed to properly address such conflict. [...] Yet, this state of affairs was allowed to persist for at least three years – from July 2011 to July 2014 – and in that period of time, AHTC disbursed over $23m under the Contracts".
"The character of such neglect, in sum, was at least potentially grave. We are thus unable to see how such conduct that amounted to gross negligence can be said to have been done in good faith", the court noted.
Lim added that officials were trusted by Singaporeans to discharge their duties responsibly and that misdeeds could undermine our system of governance:
"Unfortunately, this entire incident has called into question the processes, structures and authorities that are in place to help, protect and serve every resident. If there is a wrong, we have the responsibility to make right."
"I urge all town councils to continually examine their processes to see if there are any fault-line so that we can continue to serve our residents in the best way," he wrote.
Response by Workers' Party leaders
In a statement published on their In Good Faith blog, current party chief Pritam Singh, former WP chief Low Thia Khiang, and party chairman Sylvia Lim said they were "pleased" to note that the court of appeal had found that they had acted in good faith in awarding the managing agent contract to FM Solutions & Services (FMSS) and in awarding the contracts to certain third party contractors.
The trio has used the blog to appeal for funds from the public to cover legal fees in October 2018 and successfully raised slightly over a million dollars over three days.
"We are still in the process of studying the judgment of the Court of Appeal released earlier today with our lawyers and take advice on the next steps," said Singh, Lim and Low.
They also thanked members of the public and supporters who have stood by them throughout this case.
Background
On Nov. 9, the Court of Appeals partially overturned a previous judgment by ruling that WP leaders and others involved in running AHTC had acted in good faith with regard to some of the issues they were previously found liable for.
The WP leaders involved include Singh, Low, and Lim.
There were previously found in a 2019 High Court judgment to have breached their fiduciary duties to the AHTC.
However, the court upheld that all three were still liable to AHTC for "gross negligence" in certain respects relating to the payments process.
Hence, the issue of damages for the negligence will be dealt with at a later stage.
Top image from Lim Biow Chuan's Facebook page and by Sulaiman Daud