Pritam Singh Marks 12 Years as MP, Emphasizes Unity Among Races

SINGAPORE: Mr Pritam Singh, the country’s first official Leader of the Opposition, marked his twelfth year as a Member of Parliament in a Sunday morning (May 7) Facebook post showing a photo of himself stirring a large soup pot together with some workers at Geylang Serai Market.

Using the words “Hammer Outreach”, referring to his party’s outreach programme, Mr Singh, the Workers’ Party’s secretary-general, hashtagged his post #wpsg #exactly12yearssince7May2011 #kambingsoupforthesoul.

The WP members also visited Marine Parade Food Centre that morning, with Mr Singh telling a group of older women, “The older I become, I see that whether you are Chinese, Indian, Malay, (we’re) all the same. All want to be happy, all want to help people. All don’t want to be (an) angry person. Simple. That’s all. Everybody’s the same.”

@thehammertok

Yes we are all one and the same. We love you aunties 😘 #wpsg #hammeroutreach #marineparade #pritamsingh

♬ original sound – The Workers’ Party 🔨 – The Workers’ Party 🔨

In the 2011 general election, Mr Singh, together with his predecessor Low Thia Khiang, party chair Sylvia Lim, Chen Show Mao and Muhamad Faisal bin Abdul Manap, formed the WP slate at Aljunied GRC and beat the People’s Action Party (PAP)

It was the first time the Workers’ Party, or any opposition party in Singapore, won in a GRC.

The Workers’ Party defeated the incumbent PAP team led by the then Foreign Affairs Minister George Yeo by 72,289 votes (54.7 per cent) to 59,829 (45.2 per cent).

In the 2015 election, the same WP slate won again at Aljunied GRC, this time by a narrower margin, 50.96 per cent to the PAP’s 49.04 per cent.

In 2018, Mr Pritam Singh was elected party chief and became the de facto Leader of the Opposition.

In 2020, Mr Low and Mr Chen and former WP MP Png Eng Huat (Hougang SMC) announced they would not contest the election, making way for a younger cohort of WP leaders.

That year, Mr Singh stood for election in Aljunied with Ms Lim, Mr Faisal, Mr Gerald Giam and Mr Leon Perera, both of whom had served as Non-Constituency Members of Parliament from 2015 to 2020, and the WP team scored its biggest win against the PAP to date, winning almost 60 per cent of the votes.

Mr Singh was designated by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as the official Leader of the Opposition after GE2020’s results were tallied.

/TISG

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