Singapore — Following a discussion in parliament on Monday (Jun 5), lawyer and opposition leader Lim Tean spoke up on Facebook to highlight the importance of the opposition upping their game and holding the government accountable for their actions and decisions.
Mr Lim expressed that he was left disappointed after Pritam Singh (leader of the Opposition and Workers’ Party head) and Teo Chee Hean (Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security) examined the government’s actions, inactions, and reactions over the Covid-19 pandemic.
Having viewed several clips of the exchange, Mr Lim surmised that Mr Singh wanted to request a Commission of Inquiry (COI) over the issue much like the Peoples Voice (PV) party that Mr Lim is a leader of.
PV has been calling for a COI for over 15 months since the Singaporean government has made many mistakes that cost numerous Singaporeans dearly in terms of their jobs and businesses, according to Mr Lim.
Mr Lim also says that he was disappointed that Mr Singh let Mr Teo with a mere tap on the wrist when Mr Teo had suggested implementing an “After Action Review”. When asked for more details about the review, Mr Teo was forced to admit that the People’s Action Party (PAP) had yet to work out the details and decide on how it should be structured.
With regard to the suggestion, Mr Lim felt that it was somewhat duplicitous of Mr Teo to suggest that the review could not be carried out currently due to the pandemic. He adds that the reason why Singapore is in such bad shape at the moment is due to the poor decisions made when the outbreak occurred and that no reviews were conducted between Oct 2020 and Apr 2021.
Mr Lim included several missteps and mistakes made during the pandemic in 2020:
- Dissuading members of the public from wearing masks unless they were sick;
- Encouraging citizens to live their lives as they normally would;
- Informing Singaporeans that Singapore could not close its borders since it must be accessible to the rest of the world;
- Giving mass events such as the Chingay Parade the green light when citizens pleaded for them to be shut down;
- Allowing Singaporeans to continue visiting without measure such as social distancing;
- Organizing the General Elections and telling citizens that the situation might not improve when it actually improved quite quickly once elections were over.
As such, Mr Lim says that it is possible that a lack of review of the actions taken in 2020 led to the “heightened alert” this year. He also questions which party would be held responsible for the mistakes made if the review were to be conducted.
It is important to ask the correct questions without reservation in debates, Mr Lim concludes. The opposition should ask questions that are difficult to answer and hold the government of the day accountable for their actions.
You Zi Xuan is an intern at The Independent SG. /TISG