AHTC trial: Low, Davinder clash on 'contingency plan'

The Workers' Party (WP) plan to hire a new managing agent for its town council in 2011 was not devised as a contingency against the withdrawal of its existing agent, Senior Counsel Davinder Singh said yesterday.

Instead, the WP MPs had decided to appoint FM Solutions & Services (FMSS) within three days of winning Aljunied GRC - even before the GRC's agent CPG Facilities Management had told them on May 30 it wanted to pull out of its contract.

Mr Singh made the point when cross-examining former WP chief Low Thia Khiang on the eighth day of a multi-million-dollar civil lawsuit involving three WP MPs.

He said: "I suggest to you, Sir, that on the morning of the first working day after the election (on May 7), you had sealed CPG's fate.

"You had decided to... appoint a company in which (then secretary of Hougang Town Council How Weng Fan) would be involved as the managing agent," Mr Singh added, referencing an e-mail Mr Low sent to his party's newly-elected MPs.

This was despite CPG's experience and Mr Low not having read the terms of its contract, said Mr Singh, who argued that in doing so, the WP MPs compromised residents' interests.

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Mr Low disagreed on every count, saying each time: "That is not true."

Mr Singh had also said that if a managing agent wanted to terminate its contract with a town council, a "responsible town councillor" would check on its contractual obligations and not simply release the firm.

This was what Mr Low failed to do in 2011, and he jumped at this chance to fulfil his plan to appoint a new company run by his supporters, he added.

During the hearing, Mr Low said that on May 9, the contingency plan was discussed but no decision had been made at that point to replace CPG and appoint someone else.

Mr Singh countered that none of the "highly-educated" members of Mr Low's team referred to the plan as a contingency in their e-mail replies.

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He also said Mr Loh had, on May 12, 2011, applied to the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority to register FMSS' company name.

Logically, Mr Singh said, this meant Mr Low and Ms How had discussed setting up the company before that date. Yet, nothing was done to inform CPG there would be a new managing agent.

Mr Low replied there was no decision made at the time to replace CPG and if the MPs had made such a choice, CPG would have to be told.

He also said CPG had wanted out and asked for mutual release. When they were released, the town councillors appointed a new agent.

But Mr Singh noted that a letter sent by Ms How to CPG on May 13 - 17 days before CPG said it would pull out - gave a different impression. Written with the letterhead of Hougang Town Council, she said "we" had been instructed by the MPs to arrange for a taking over of the town council management.

Mr Low replied that this referred to WP taking over from the PAP.

Mr Singh said the letter was deliberately designed to give CPG the impression the MPs had decided to manage Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC) in-house.

It was a "calculated" move to avoid calling a tender and risking that anyone other than FMSS would get the job, he added.

Mr Low disagreed this was the intent: "The purpose, as I have explained, is a contingency plan anticipating CPG pullout."

Mr Low, WP chairman Sylvia Lim and current chief Pritam Singh are among eight defendants sued by the Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council (PRPTC) over alleged losses suffered when Punggol East was run by the opposition town council.

Mr Singh represents the PRPTC, which in 2016 appointed audit firm PwC to review past payments made by the Aljunied-Hougang Town CouncilAHTC relating to Punggol East, which the WP took charge of after a 2013 by-election. The PAP won it back in the 2015 polls.