SINGAPORE: Workers’ Party chair Ms Sylvia Lim took to social media earlier this week to share a heartwarming encounter she had during the distribution of Hammer, the party’s newsletter, at Blk 58 New Upper Changi Road Market on Sunday morning (Oct 1).
On her Instagram account, Ms Lim wrote that she “Bumped into my late father’s secondary school mate yesterday. We started talking about my dad and, to my surprise, he got rather emotional and cried.” She posted a photo of herself standing with another member of the WP team, with an older man between them.
Ms Lim’s father, Mr Lim Choon Mong, had once been part of the police force but eventually resigned and went on study law in London. At the age of 39, he became a practising lawyer. Born in 1937, Mr Lim passed away in 2017.
The WP chair, who has shared about her relationship with her father in the past, added that the reaction of her father’s former schoolmate touched her, but that she hastened to comfort him. “I was very moved and told him that there wasn’t any need for tears as he had lived a full life and had obviously impacted others. Today, six years after his death, I still look to my late father for inspiration, especially in difficult moments. #Wisdom #Courage“
Last June, in a Father’s Day post over IG, she wrote that she and her father had had some “turbulent times.” However, she quickly followed this up by adding that later on, they “became the best drinking buddies.”
“That’s Family!” she wrote. Before she entered politics, the WP chair’s career had been similar to her father’s. She had not only studied law in Singapore and London but also worked as a police inspector from 1991 to 1994.
However, she revealed in a 2013 AsiaOne interview that she almost dropped out of the National University of Singapore, where she studied law because she could not see how being a lawyer would help society. In the final year of her studies, she saw a policeman directing traffic while standing in the rain and believed that this would be a way for the law to serve society. She then decided on a career in law enforcement, which her father was less than thrilled about.
He then sent her to the University of London for her Master of Law degree, hoping she would change her mind. But the strong-willed Ms Lim did not, telling the interviewer. “In my heart, I just felt that I just had to do” join the Police Academy. Her father then threw her out of the house.
Nevertheless, her father also gave her a political education when he talked about the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his policies around the dinner table. While Ms Lim’s mother, sister, and brother were uninterested, she engaged in discussions with him.
/TISG
Sylvia Lim tracks down the family of her father’s namesake after decades-long search