On Jul. 17, two PAP Members of Parliament (MP) submitted their letters of resignation to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Speaker of Parliament, Tan Chuan Jin, and Tampines GRC MP, Cheng Li Hui, had been having an "inappropriate relationship" since July 2020, according to replies by PM Lee to the media on the day the news broke.
PM Lee said he was alerted to this issue after General Election 2020.
Tan is married with two children.
Cheng is unmarried.
This is not the first time a Speaker of the House has stepped down after being involved in an affair.
In 2012, then Speaker of the House, Michael Palmer, resigned from his positions and as a MP when a member of the public exposed his relationship with a People’s Association (PA) staff member.
The PA staff was reported to be Laura Ong, then a constituency director of Pasir Ris West Constituency Office.
Texts and emails leaked to The New Paper
According to The New Paper on Dec. 13, 2012, the scandal first reached the public’s consciousness when an anonymous source leaked screengrabs of messages and emails from Ong’s smartphone to the paper on Dec. 8, 2012.
They included intimate messages between Palmer and Ong:
“Hello darling I hope you’re having a good massage…I love you and miss you loads. XOXO.”
“every time we meet on monday, the kisses are lesser…the time we spend getting intimate is also lesser.”
There was also an email with the subject line: “Fwd: Your booking at Fairmont Singapore…”
The New Paper also reported that they had received a picture of a Dior handbag that Palmer had purportedly given Ong.
According to the source, Palmer and Ong had been in a relationship for one year.
Palmer later stated that they had never directly worked with each other.
PM Lee: Resignation “the proper thing to do”
On the same day, Palmer approached then Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean and admitted to the affair, saying that he would resign from his political positions.
Teo then told Palmer to look after his family and “make up for the hurt he had caused them”.
PM Lee was subsequently informed and agreed that Palmer’s offer to resign was the “proper thing to do”.
According to TNP, the PAP then spent two days making arrangements to ensure that the residents of Punggol East would be taken care of.
On the afternoon of Dec. 12, Teo held a press conference where Palmer officially admitted to the affair and announced his resignation.
Palmer apologised and said that he was "deeply sorry for letting down the residents" of Punggol East, PAP, his supporters and his family.
Teo said the PAP expects its “MPs and advisors to uphold good moral standards".
"And in addition, MPs have a duty to the public which they can only perform if they do not mix up their personal and official relationships", Teo added.
In PM Lee's reply to Palmer's resignation letter, he called Palmer an MP who "worked diligently", "tirelessly attending to the needs of [his] residents."
However, he also added it was "necessary that all PAP MPs and advisors to grassroots organisations uphold the highest standards of personal conduct... and that the party be seen to hold its MPs and advisors to these standards."
MP Halimah Yacob subsequently succeeded Palmer as Speaker of the House.
Following Palmer’s resignation, he continued being a lawyer, and reportedly joined as a partner to form the law firm Quahe Woo & Palmer in 2013.
Similar incidents
Speakers Tan and Palmer are not the only political figures to have resigned over matters of personal indiscretion.
In February, 2012, only a few months before Palmer's resignation, Workers' Party (WP) MP Yaw Shin Leong was expelled from the party following allegations of an extramarital affair as well.
This matter was brought up again in December 2021, when WP Secretary General Pritam Singh said Yaw had been dismissed from the party for not holding himself accountable to both himself and the party.
However, Yaw, who now lives in Myanmar, came out and denied Singh's claim, saying he had been advised by party leadership then to "stay silent".
In 2016, PAP MP David Ong suddenly resigned, citing "personal indiscretion" as the cause.
It was later discovered that he had been having an affair with Wendy Lim, a Bukit Batok PAP Women's Wing activist.
In PM Lee's reply to Ong's letter of resignation, he wrote that he believed Ong's resignation to be "in the best interest" of Ong's constituents, the party, his family and Ong himself".
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