‘PAP never airs its dirty laundry… WP needs to catch up on tightening intra-party governance’ — Singaporeans react to Daniel Goh’s expulsion

SINGAPORE: After former NCMP Daniel Goh announced over social media that he had been expelled from The Workers’ Party, several netizens said the WP should tighten its intra-party governance.

Mr Goh, who had served as a Non-Constituency Member of Parliament from 2016 to 2020, posted a highly redacted letter dated May 26 he received from the WP, where only the sentence “Your expulsion is to take immediate effect upon notice transmitted to you by way of this letter,” can be read.

“My retirement from politics is complete,” Mr Goh wrote, adding that “Since the Central Executive Committee requested nicely that I not disclose the correspondence due to information about the ‘inner workings’ of the party, I won’t. Though ironically that is the very reason given for the expulsion.”

While sympathetic to the WP, commenters on Reddit argued that this is one area where it can take a leaf from the playbook of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP).

“Not saying who’s right or wrong. But one thing that PAP really has in spades over WP, and that WP needs to catch up on, is tightening in intra-party governance.

PAP never airs its dirty laundry, even with scandals like Ivan Lim and Michael Palmer (still disgusted that PA revealed the name of the mistress).”

Other commenters agreed.

One pointed out, however, that “the party is now more successful than the post-JBJ days when Low took over and needed to build a successful platform.

Maintaining success as an opposition party was always going to be a tough task. Funnily enough, politics ‘at home’ can prove to be tougher than politics against the PAP.”

Yet another added that WP chief Pritam Singh is well able to handle internal matters, as he has a master’s degree in war studies.

“Daniel Goh only has to look at how PAP operates to know that they have tight discipline and there has not been a single instance of a party member issue surfacing in public. PAP reshaped its internal party controls after the attempted coup that led to the formation of Barisan by renegade members,” one Reddit user wrote.   

Late last year, Mr Goh said that party leadership called for a disciplinary committee due to his Facebook posts about former WP MP Raeesah Khan. /TISG

Ex NCMP Daniel Goh declines to be interviewed by WP disciplinary committee over his FB posts on ‘Raeesah Khan matter’