• Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam is giving a ministerial statement on the case
• This will ensure a full debate on the matter, Mr Tan said
• He slammed the “false narrative” some have spun about parliamentary process
• People’s Action Party MP Louis Ng said he cannot cede his adjournment motion slot on secondhand smoke
• There is space to discuss both secondhand smoke and the Parti Liyani case, Mr Ng said

SINGAPORE — The high-profile court case involving the former domestic helper of Changi Airport Group’s ex-chairman Liew Mun Leong will be fully debated in Parliament even though a proposed adjournment motion on the issue has not been picked for the next parliamentary session, Speaker of Parliament Tan Chuan-Jin said.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday (Sept 29), Mr Tan assured Singaporeans that the case, which ended with former domestic helper Parti Liyani being acquitted of stealing from Mr Liew’s family, will get a full airing as Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam will be delivering a ministerial statement on the matter.

He was responding to what he called a “false narrative” that had emerged about the parliamentary process, after an announcement on Tuesday that Workers' Party (WP) chairman Sylvia Lim's motion to speak on enhancing equity in Singapore's criminal justice system at next week’s Parliament sitting was not selected in a random ballot.

The ballot had to be conducted as Mr Tan had to choose from five adjournment motions for the next sitting.

“Just because a motion is not picked this round does not mean it would not be picked again. But more critically, how on earth is this the be all and end all?” he wrote in a postscript added late on Tuesday to a Facebook post about the results of the ballot.

“For example, not picking the motion on the criminal justice system does not mean that it would not be addressed at all. In fact parliamentary questions have been filed and Minister K Shanmugam had already stated that the issue would be fully addressed via a ministerial statement, which would obviously include a full and substantive debate.”

The adjournment motion that was drawn from the ballot is from People’s Action Party (PAP) Member of Parliament (MP) Louis Ng, who will speak about protection against secondhand smoke in the home. Mr Ng and Ms Lim were both present to witness the ballot.

An adjournment motion allows an MP to raise additional matters of public concern at the end of a parliamentary sitting for up to 20 minutes. If more than one MP wishes to move an adjournment motion for the sitting, the motion will be decided by ballot.

Since Mr Tan announced the result of the ballot on Tuesday, some netizens have called on Mr Ng to give up his slot to Ms Lim. 

That, however, is not possible under the parliamentary procedures, Mr Ng told TODAY on Wednesday.

“It is not an either/or. We keep going down that path in society where it's either secondhand smoke or Parti Liyani. Actually we can do both,” he said.

He added that he, too, has filed a parliamentary question to ask whether the Ministry of Home Affairs would consider allowing foreign domestic workers and other work permit holders to be accompanied by non-legal personnel in police interviews to provide translation and emotional support to the suspect.

“I think the activists need some assurance that this issue is not swept under the carpet,” Mr Ng said.

Mr Ng had written on Facebook on Sept 12 about his intention to raise the matter of secondhand smoke in Parliament as the number of disputes over cigarette smoke in Housing and Development Board flats had quadrupled to eight cases a month during and after the circuit breaker period earlier this year as residents were mostly confined to their homes.

He had also noted in a post on Sept 6 that secondhand smoke kills more than one person in Singapore every day, based on data showing 383 died from it in 2016.

Some netizens had gone as far as to suggest that the result of the adjournment motion ballot was proof that the parliamentary process was biased in favour of the ruling PAP, prompting Mr Tan’s rebuttal.

Added Mr Tan in a Facebook comment: “Some folks who claim to care about the process have no interest to fact-check nor to find out more… (The) issues will be fully debated and addressed in the near future yet some choose to make it out to be an avoidance of the issue. Remarkable.”

TODAY has reached out to Ms Lim for comment.