Jamus Lim: Even the hardest-working MP may not get an opportunity to meet every single one of their residents

SINGAPORE: The upcoming swearing-in of Lawrence Wong as Prime Minister has sparked talk of the next General Election, wrote Workers’ Party MP Jamus Lim in a Facebook post on Friday (26 Apr). The topic has been part of conversations the WP team at Sengkang had at Anchorvale this week, he added.

Mr Wong, currently Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, is set to be sworn in on May 15. The handover of power from PM Lee Hsien Loong to Mr Wong has perhaps naturally given rise to buzz concerning when the next GE, which must be held before 23 November 2025, will be.

“Many residents have asked if the general elections are round the corner, and relatedly, if that’s why we were visiting,” wrote Assoc Prof Lim, adding, “As I share with them, I’ve been doing house visits since we were first elected—with pauses during the pandemic lockdown periods—but, given the number of blocks in the division, it takes time before we get to every one.”

He then wrote that some residents had observed that before the Sengkang team visited them, they had never seen their MP.

Assoc Prof Lim noted, “In my experience, even the hardest-working MP may not get an opportunity to meet every single one of their residents, given the vagaries of crossed paths and serendipity.”

However, he underlined the value he finds in the house visits, writing, “I can only say that I cherish all conversations I’m able to have, and that—in addition to following up on their specific concerns with the relevant authorities—I also learn about broad sentiments on the ground, which inform the way I think about policies and the sort of interventions we make in Parliament.”

Assoc Prof Lim, along with Ms He Ting Ru and Mr Louis Chua, are first-term parliamentarians, having mounted a successful bid against the ruling People’s Action Party in 2020 in the newly-minted Sengkang GRC.

The win came as a surprise to many, given that the WP slate of newbies went up against a stacked PAP team that included a former Senior Parliamentary Secretary, a former Senior Minister of State, and the Secretary-General of the National Trades Union Congress.

The WP slate won with 52.12 per cent of votes in Sengkang.

Assoc Prof Lim was introduced to the public early in 2020 when Ms Lee Li Lian posted photos of him on Facebook going house to house in a WP shirt. Ms Lee is a former MP who represented the Punggol East SMC, which is now part of Sengkang GRC. /TISG

Read also: Jamus Lim on why Singapore has never produced Nobel laureate and why straight-A students ‘never rise to the top’