SINGAPORE: After the Arsenal Football Club ended a 22-year drought and finally won the Premier League last month, Workers’ Party chief Pritam Singh, although a longtime Manchester United fan, congratulated Arsenal fans in Singapore.
Mr Singh posted a video of himself being confronted with a long line of Arenal fans within the WP, which ended with him doing a version of ManU’s Mattheus Cunha’s famous and gif-worthy celebratory dance move.
The short clip, posted on June 2 (Tuesday), has been viewed nearly 720,000 times and has gotten hundreds of comments from Instagram users.
Mr Singh even engaged with some of the commenters, thanking one who advised him “Watch your knees ah…” and replying “Up the Hammers!” to a Westham fan.
And when WP Non-constituency Member of Parliament Andre Low posted a gif of Bryan Mbeumo celebrating a goal against Tottenham Hotspur from earlier this year, as if suggesting that the WP chief could also copy his moves, Mr Singh joked back that “Any mimicking of Mbeumo’s celebration must include beard length.”
Several fellow ManU fans simply wrote “GGMU,” which stands for “Glory, Glory Manchester United,” a popular rallying cry, chant, and acronym used by the club’s fans.
Meanwhile, a fellow football fan wrote, “You gave me another reason to list you as my fav politician.”
Singaporeans perhaps first learned of Mr Singh’s love for ManU in 2012, the year after he was first elected into Parliament.
“Tough being a Manchester United fan today……..a performance unworthy of champions. Advantage Man City, it seems,” he wrote in a Facebook post on April 22, 2012, and when commenters discussed the match, he also added commentary.
In February 2022, after house visits at Eunos, the ward he has been representing in Parliament over the past 15 years, he posted about touching a “This is Anfield” sign outside a resident’s home for the first time in his life.
Later that year, also during house visits, he was happy to have found a fellow ManU supporter at one household, posting a photo with a resident who had hung an Old Trafford M16 sign on his gate.
“There are a rather large number of Liverpool fans in the Eunos ward of Aljunied GRC. I have seen my fair share of ‘This is Anfield’ signs, wrought-iron gates in the shape of the liverbird….you name it.
So it was nice to see Hamdan and family last night during house visits, playing their part to bring some balance to the Force!”” he wrote. /TISG
