SINGAPORE: While being head of Singapore’s most high-profile opposition party undoubtedly has its challenges, it also appears to have quite the bright side, including opportunities to meet new people.
Mr Pritam Singh, the secretary-general of The Workers’ Party and the first officially designated Leader of the Opposition in Singapore, wrote that “one of most rewarding parts” of being a Member of Parliament is “visiting homes, and making new acquaintances and friends.”
In a Apr 26 (Wednesday) Facebook post, he wrote, “It was true 12 years ago in 2011, and it remains true today… like my colleagues and I did this evening in Compassvale, Sengkang GRC.”
Mr Singh was first elected as MP of Aljunied GRC in 2011, along with a WP slate of former WP chief Low Thia Khiang, current party chair and vice chair Sylvia Lim and Muhamad Faisal Bin Abdul Manap (respectively), and Chen Show Mao.
Mr Singh added in his post, “In another part of Singapore, my colleague Nathaniel Koh 许金桂 met a former resident who used to reside in the Eunos ward of Aljunied GRC. Thank you all for the conversations, your warm wishes and encouragement. Your support keeps us going.”
Mr Koh was part of the WP slate contested at Marine Parade GRC in the General Election of 2020.
And while Mr Singh was in Compassvale doing house visits this week, by May, he will have been representing the Eunos division for nearly 12 years.
Compassvale is the former ward of ex-WP MP Raeesah Khan, who stepped down in late 2021 after discovering that she had lied more than once in Parliament.
The rest of the WP MPs in Sengkang GRC have taken on Ms Khan’s former duties, but other WP MP’s have also been spotted on the ground there, including the LO himself.
Mr Singh has visited Compassvale several times over the past year. As the WP put it in a May 2022 post, the party believes “in the importance of sharing the burden of our political commitments collectively. This was evident tonight, as our MPs gathered together in #SengkangGRC to perform the first of what will be an ongoing effort to visit the households of #Compassvale.”
Mr Singh has continued to carry this out. Just last month he wrote in a Facebook post that he “hit the jackpot” because there were many residents at home when he went on house visits that day at Compassvale.
“Back to Sengkang GRC this evening for housevisits in the Compassvale ward of the constituency. Hit the jackpot today with a good number of residents at home…. Sometimes, you just know you are going to have a good day of housevisits.”
/TISG
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