WP CEC election: Sylvia and Pritam re-elected as party leaders, former Think Centre president Tan Kong Soon makes a return

Sylvia Lim and Pritam Singh were re-elected as the Workers’ Party chair and secretary-general respectively, while three new faces including Tan Kong Soon, former Think Centre president, was elected into their central executive committee (CEC) during their cadre members conference held on 12 November.

The party said that, “The new CEC has taken office, with a mix of members of different ages and backgrounds; and has started work with immediate effect.”

Former party chief Low Thia Khiang remained in the CEC, alongside all WP members of parliament, while ex-Hougang SMC parliamentarian Png Eng Huat was not re-elected.

The other two new names in the CEC are Nathaniel Koh and Ang Boon Yaw. Koh has been with the party for more than a decade and contested the previous election at the Marine Parade GRC.

Prior to that, he was WP’s youth wing vice-president and assisted with Aljunied GRC member of parliament Faisal Manap’s meet-the-people session. In 2015, Koh was the election agent for WP’s Koh Choong Yong at the now-defunct Sengkang West SMC.

Ang is a 40-year-old lawyer and has been volunteering with the party since 2012 with former MP Chen Show Mao.

“I followed the speeches made and parliament questions raised by the WP MPs and I find WP is a political party that is a rational and responsible one. The WP’s position on the White Paper on Population and the recent amendment of the President Elections Act, is very much in line with most people on the ground feel,” said Ang on WP’s website.

While Tan is among the new faces in the line-up, he is a familiar face to the leadership as he was elected to the CEC in 2016. He is a former legislative assistant to party stalwart Low Thia Khiang from 2013 till 2017.

Tan has years of political experience before he joined the Workers’ Party and was involved in the 2001 Singapore General Election too. Back then, he was the election agent for Singapore Democratic Alliance candidate Christopher Neo in Tampines GRC.

“The GE experience is something that I will not mind going through all over again. What I went through from the beginning to the end of the 9 days was invaluable. I learnt about the processes of elections, about the personalities of opposition candidates, about the strategies of each political party, about the supposed neutrality of authorities and about the attitude of the ruling party towards other parties,” said Tan in an interview posted on Think Centre website in 2002.

The party’s CEC election takes place every two years and only cadre members are eligible to vote for their leadership. There are currently 15 elected members in the WP CEC, one more compared to the 2020 CEC election. /TISG