SINGAPORE: Workers’ Party politician Yee Jenn Jong turned a recently-used phrase on its head in a social media post by saying that the WP is “not standing still,” referencing a sentence in a Straits Times article that party chief and Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh called out as false.
On Tuesday (Apr 17), Mr Singh issued a “Correction Notice” on his Facebook page over an ST opinion piece titled “Creating forward momentum for next GE when Lawrence Wong is PM.” In it, Dr Gillian Koh, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies at the National University of Singapore had wrote, “The WP said it will tilt towards the strategy of fighting to form the Government at the next GE.”
Read related: Pritam Singh issues correction notice on ST piece that said WP is ‘fighting to form the Government at the next GE’
Mr Singh wrote, “This is false,” explaining that the WP’s medium-term goal is to ensure that a third of the seats in Parliament do not go to the ruling PAP. Shortly afterward, Dr Koh apologised and ST published a correction the next day.
On his part, Mr Yee, a former Non-Constituency Member of Parliament for the WP, wrote exactly how the WP is “Not Standing Still.”
Tracing back to his own story of contesting under WP, Mr Yee wrote that he “must have done around 10 million steps count in the WP shirt since April 2011 – for 3 GE and 2 BE campaigns, house visits, Hammer outreaches and more. The entire WP would have done billion of steps count in this same period.”
“Nope, we are not standing still,” he added.
Mr Yee then went on to recount house visits with “a young team” he’s mentoring, saying that they often field questions about the next General Election, which must be held before Nov 23, 2025.
He usually answered by saying that they visit different parts of a constituency weekly and that they will only know when the GE will be held at the same time as residents do when an announcement is made. He wrote:
“Preparation for the next GE starts soon after the last one. It is ongoing, never standing still. When I joined, my chief motivation was that Singapore cannot depend on just the so-called Team A. I never bought the story that Singapore only has enough for one team. Competition is what is necessary to break the complacency of any monopoly.
“Politics is no exception. I am glad that the team I joined is realistic. Attracting capable candidates for each GE able to be a good MP remains a challenge. It is good to see that many more have continued to join despite all the challenges thrown at those who will stand with the alternative camp. It is an ongoing journey of billions of steps.”
/TISG
Read also: ST publishes correction on IPS Research Fellow’s op-ed after call out from Pritam Singh