‘Irresponsible’: ST called out for rumours that Pritam Singh lost Workers’ Party’s support, including that of Low Thia Khiang’s

SINGAPORE: In the June 29 episode of the Yah Lah But podcast, hosts Haresh Tilani and Terence Chia talked about the results of the special cadres conference and the biennial election of the Workers’ Party that had taken place the day before, where the party appeared to rally behind Pritam Singh, who emerged as Secretary-General for the fifth consecutive time.

The podcast hosts appeared to take these developments as much ado about nothing, especially in the light of speculation abounding concerning the future of the WP’s leadership in light of the difficulties Mr Singh has faced in the wake of the 2021 Raeesah Khan scandal. However, they also raised questions about how the matter was tackled by The Straits Times.

Mr Tilani and Mr Chia called the results a “nothing burger,” noting that even they, in an episode from four weeks ago, discussed different scenarios, which turned out to be unnecessary, since a supermajority within the party, reported to be at least 79% of the 107 cadres present, had voted for Mr Singh.

They pointed out that this figure is “more than what the PAP got from Singapore” and that when Chen Show Mao challenged former WP chief Low Thia Khiang for the leadership of the party, the vote had been 61 to 45 in favour of Mr Low, though Mr Singh had no contender.

What the hosts, especially Mr Tilani, took exception to was the reporting in the lead-up to the special cadres meeting, especially from The Straits Times, which published an article on June 25 titled Will Pritam Singh stay or be ousted as WP chief? Unhappy cadres plan to put up a fight.

“They talked about disgruntled cadres and how they wanted to unseat (Mr Singh). It kind of made it a lot more dramatic than what the outcome actually was, according to what Gerald Giam and Pritam Singh said,” Mr Tilani said.

He also called it “d*** annoying,” adding that political commentators could talk about this sort of thing on social media in an individual capacity, but appeared to find it inappropriate, if not questionable, for a national broadsheet such as ST.

Mr Tilani also pointed out that while other mainstream media outlets, such as CNA and the South China Morning Post, had covered the conference, they made no mention of rumours.

One section of the ST article referenced by the hosts reads, “Rumours are swirling within the party that former chief Low Thia Khiang, who is still on the party’s central executive committee, has ended his support for Singh.”

On Sunday, however, shortly before the meeting, Mr Low had expressed the contrary, saying he would support Mr Singh.

Mr Tilani said that in the ST article “they were almost kind of taking a bit of a gleeful hope that things would implode” within the WP, which he found irresponsible as it would affect “people’s judgments of something that could be more objectively written about.”

The hosts also noted how journalists had camped out at the venue for the meeting and gave a play-by-play of everyone arriving, hyping it up as though it were the MET gala or the World Cup final.

“And then, according to Pritam and Gerald Giam, it was a very robust civil discussion and nothing more came out of it,” the hosts noted. /TISG

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