Leon Perera refutes Chee Hong Tat’s Facebook post on Parliamentary video footage
Workers’ Party member Leon Perera has refuted a statement by Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information Chee Hong Tat, in which Chee said Perera had implied that broadcaster Mediacorp “had edited Parliamentary footages in a partisan manner”.
In a Facebook post on Thursday evening (10 Nov), Chee said “Mr Leon Perera alleged that Mediacorp had edited a video from the debate on the Presidential Elections (Amendment) Bill in February this year, with ‘certain bits removed’. He claimed that after his intervention, Mediacorp ‘made a rectification and put up a different clip’.” Chee added that the Non-Constituency Member of Parliament had made a “serious” accusation.
Perera said in response, “I did not state that the footage he referred to had been edited in a partisan manner. My [Parliamentary questions] and [Supplementary questions] had asked about the ownership of the Copyright to Parliamentary video footage and why Parliamentary video live feed cannot be made available as it is in many other countries.”
Perera and Chee also had a terse exchange in Parliament on Tuesday regarding curbs on tobacco products and the use of e-cigarettes. Chee had asked Perera if he wanted to declare any interests with regard to supporting the use of e-cigarettes. Perera responded that his comments were not motivated by prospect of financial gain and that he wanted to “register a very strong objection” to insinuation that there was commercial motivation behind his comments.
