The Workers’ Party (WP) announced yesterday that it had filed a Parliamentary motion to have the Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) seat offered to Ms Lee Li Lian be declared vacant and for Associate Professor Daniel Goh to take up the seat.
Opposition to the vacant NCMP seat being offered to WP’s Prof Goh has risen even before Parliament can meet to discuss the motion.
National Solidarity Party’s (NSP) candidate in the last General Election, Elvin Ong, has commented on the Facebook page ‘We are Against Pink Dot in Singapore’ (WAAPD) – a page run by ultra-conservatives here, and said, “Never let him get into the parliament please. For the sake of Singaporean. WP should choose someone else instead”.
Linking news of the motion being filed by WP on the page, a regular contributor to WAAPD said that the “pro-family people have a message to Low Thia Khiang, Chief of Workers Party”, that “it does not matter what Daniel Goh’s (or any other politician for that matter) credentials are, as long as he is supportive of the harmful and dangerous LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) and pansexuality rights and homosexual agenda, he must NOT be in parliament”.
When another commenter on the post said that he thought that WP had a good candidate in Prof Goh and was not aware that Prof Goh was a “pro-LGBT supporter”, Mr Ong replied to the commenter that he “should go and refer to he’s past press release and speech before the Election to find out more”.
In November 2013, when opposition arose to Health Promotion Board’s (HPB) FAQ about sexuality on its website, addressing questions such as “What does it mean to be gay/bisexual?” and “Where can my child find support in Singapore?”, Prof Goh came out to support HPB’s FAQ as being “very factual and reflect the current social scientific and scientific understanding of homosexuality”.
In 2014, a post-graduate student also thanked Prof Goh for “his firm and strict guidance” in helping her to complete her thesis titled, “The lesbian community in post-independence Singapore“.
In the 2015 General Election, NSP drew some flak from some quarters for going for a three-cornered fight in MacPherson single member constituency with People’s Action Party and WP.
![](https://media.theindependent.sg/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/goh.jpg)
![](https://media.theindependent.sg/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/goh.jpg)