Singapore — Controversial figure Iris Koh aimed several barbs at Workers’ Party MP Jamus Lim’s (Sengkang GRC) Facebook post on Feb 8, and used the MP’s post as a springboard to express her disappointment with the party and its leader, MP Pritam Singh.
Koh, who leads the activist group Healing The Divide, faces two charges, was recently freed from remand and is currently out on bail. She faces two charges. And, as many of us may have guessed, Koh’s disappointment with the WP is centred on Covid-19 vaccinations.
On Jan 28, she was charged with conspiring with a doctor, Jipson Quah, to defrauding the Health Ministry that certain people had been vaccinated with the Sinopharm vaccine when they had not.
On Feb 4, she was charged with obstructing a police inspector from discharging her duties. She allegedly tore up a printed copy of her own statement, which had been recorded on Jan 25 at the Police Cantonment Complex.
Healing the Divide claims to be made up of “intelligent vaxxers,” but the Ministry of Health had issued public warnings about the group, since November last year. The ministry said the group “adopts an anti-vaccination stance and claims to warn people about the dangers of vaccination,” calling them out for falsehoods regarding Covid-19.
Prof Lim’s innocuous post was all about the umbrellas sold by the WP as part of its fundraising, “especially in off-election years where interest surrounding politics tends to wane”, he wrote.
He began: “To be quite honest, the #workersparty brolly isn’t the most subtle way to express your support for an alternative voice in Parliament.”
Koh seems to have seized on that as her main bone of contention.
She comments in one post: “Utterly disappointed in the Worker’s Party and Leader of the Opposition.” In another post, she said: “You guys did nothing for the alternatives.” Koh seems to equate his mention of “an alternative voice in Parliament” with groups like the one she leads. 
She writes: “What alternative voice when no one spoke about vaccine mandates?” commenting on the main thread of the MP’s post.
Several commenters expressed support for Ms Koh.
She also takes issue with a netizen who asks, “where is the healing in this divide?” The tone of their exchange is far from cordial.
In the same comment thread, Koh also says: “The hypocrisy of this country needs to be called out for healing to begin.” Clearly, combat rather than persuasion is more Koh’s metier, even as she tells one commenter: “I will pray for you”, it is more pugnacious than prayerful.
She then continued to engage with commenters who answered her.
Later on, she reveals why she is so disappointed in the WP. It seems as though she had expected to find an ally in the leading opposition party.
“They ignored by daily emails for 2 weeks. Why? I represented a petition of more than 12,000 voices. So just conveniently to ignore us?,” Koh says in answer to another netizen.
To this, a commenter told her to “Get real, the world doesn’t revolve around u. Not everything is about pushing your agenda.”
Several other netizens defended the WP.
There were some well-meaning commenters who tried to help her out.
Interestingly, Koh is not the only opponent of vaccine mandates to express disappointment in the WP.
Significantly, while Koh posted many comments in response to Prof Lim’s, the MP does not seem to have responded to any of them, unlike with others to which he seems to engage readily on important or interesting topics. /TISG