Newly minted Non Constituency Member of Parliament, Mr Leon Perera has been very active on the ground in East Coast GRC, and in articulating his views on various issues.
Mr Perera and his comrades from the Workers’ Party visited the Bedok North market and hawker centre in East Coast GRC yesterday, both to wish the residents there ‘Happy New Year’ as well as to seek the residents views  about the issues that they would like the NCMP to raise and discuss in Parliament.
Several residents spoke to Mr Perera and his team about the issues that are peculiar to East Coast GRC and also about matters of national concern.
The NCMP in thanking the residents of that constituency, promised them that he would continue to remain accessible to them and gave them his contact details.
Me Perera was also a panelist at the Channel News Asia’s 2015 Year in Review programme which was telecast on New Year’s Day.
In the programme the NCMP spoke about the official narrative of ‘survival’ as taught in our public schools and said that survival must be for a purpose – that Singaporeans must survive so as to pursue some goal.
“There is not enough discussion in our public space and in our schools about what we want to survive to do. What we should cultivate is public discussion, and above all discussion and debate in our schools, about what values and goals should define Singapore in the 21st century,” Mr Perera later said on his social media platform.
He said that our national dialogue should go beyond topics of ‘survival’ like economic betterment (and how should we define that), quality of life, equality of opportunity, a collective moral purpose and politics; to focus on what we mean by a thriving and flourishing Singapore.
We should also recognise that “some of the things that are said to make us vulnerable – like our multi-racial and multi-religious character – are also tremendous sources of strengths that can be turned to our advantage, for example in the quest for innovation and value-creation”, the NCMP said.
We should never be complacent and have a “we have arrived mindset”, the NCMP believes. “That kind of thinking is the biggest threat to a flourishing Singapore – and, in the longer-term, to Singapore’s very survival,” Mr Perera cautions.
Mr Leon Perera seems to be the man to watch when Parliament sits in two-weeks’ time. It will be interesting to hear his maiden Speech in the House.
