Singapore—The announcement of changes to the country’s electoral boundaries on Friday (Mar 13) has fueled speculation that the General Election (GE) will be held soon, despite the current Covid-19 crisis. The media has been featuring news about potential candidates as well as possible areas where the different parties will contest.
One possible candidate that has emerged from the Workers Party (WP), the only opposition party that currently has seats in Parliament is Jamus Lim, who was featured in not one but two online news outlets this week.
On Wednesday (Mar 18), Mr Lim was featured in AsiaOne, in an article entitled, “WP’s potential GE candidate is an RI, Harvard and LSE grad.” The following day, Mothership put out an article, “Workers’ Party could field Jamus Lim, economics professor, Harvard grad & RI boy, in Sengkang GRC” about Mr Lim. The subtitle: ‘Big brain energy.’
It seems that Mr Lim caught the attention of the media after being featured in a Facebook post by Lee Li Lian, who is the party’s deputy-treasurer.
Ms Lee is also a former MP who represented the Punggol East SMC, which is now part of the newly formed Sengkang GRC, a four-seater.
There is speculation that Mr Lim will be part of the WP slate for the Sengkang GRC, which is expected to be a hotly contested battleground in the upcoming GE, which partly explains the surge of interest around Mr Lim.
Anyway, a March 16 Facebook post of Ms Lee featured Mr Lee prominently. He is featured quite often on her feed, having formally introduced him to her followers on Sept 29 of last year.
https://www.facebook.com/leelilian.sg/posts/2763357907086032
Mr Lim, whom Mothership describes as having “big brain energy,” is an academic. And to be fair, he comes with very impressive credentials indeed. Per his LinkedIn bio he is “an associate professor of economics at ESSEC Business School, Asia-Pacific, and Chief Economist at the Thirdrock Group.”
https://www.facebook.com/leelilian.sg/photos/a.501105499977962/2540589816029510/?type=3&theater
As it says in the headlines about him, he studied at Harvard University, London School of Economics, University of Southern Queensland, and the University of California, Santa Cruz, as well as Raffles Junior College and Raffles Institution.
Furthermore, Mr Lim worked at the World Bank and JP Morgan.
More information about Mr Lim can be found on his website.
The articles featuring the up-and-comer have elicited much interest from netizens, many of whom have greeted his entry into the political arena with warmth and enthusiasm.
Others believe he reflects well on the WP.
One netizen, however, pointed out that what is important is helping Singaporeans with their quality of life, rather than the party they belong to.
-/TISG