SINGAPORE: The Progress Singapore Party (PSP) was on Wednesday (Jul 5) asked to apologise and take down from Facebook a video on the Ridout Road debate in parliament.
Late on Tuesday night, PSP posted on its Facebook page a clip of its secretary-general as well as Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Leong Mun Wai asking questions in the House on Monday.
The video was captioned: “In what some online commenters are calling another ‘sia suay’ moment. The PSP’s Leong Mun Wai & Hazel Poa Koon Koon are here to do whatever it takes to ensure that the voice of the people is heard.”
“Sia suay” is a Hokkien dialect expression used in Singlish to indicate embarrassment or disgrace.
Text was also superimposed on the video, some of which read: “The Deputy Speaker reminded Mr Leong Mun Wai that he should not start a debate during a Ministerial Statement, after he urged the Deputy Speaker not to end the debate early because this is an important topic.”
On Wednesday, Leader of the House Indranee Rajah said the video was a breach of parliamentary privileges and immunities.
“The difficulty is this: The video gives a false impression of what occurred in parliament,” said Ms Indranee told the House.
The video made it seem that issues on Ridout Road – relating to the rental of state properties by ministers K Shanmugam and Vivian Balakrishnan – could not be “fully ventilated”.
It gives the impression that Deputy Speaker Christopher de Souza did not allow a debate despite a plea by Mr Leong, said Ms Indranee.
“If you think about it, it starts off with: ‘In what some online commentators are calling another sia suay moment’. What is sia suay? Embarrassing.
“So there has to be something embarrassing. What is this embarrassing thing? It goes on to say that the PSP’s Leong Mun Wai and Hazel Poa are here to do whatever it takes to ensure that the voices of people are heard,” she added.
“And then you have that blurb which suggests that they were being shut down and a debate was not allowed to take place.”