WP’s Michael Thng: I’d welcome a PAP where dissent is not merely tolerated but given real positions of influence

SINGAPORE: Former GE candidate Michael Thng weighed in on the remarks made by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong at the Young PAP YP40 festival on July 4, which have been widely covered by the media.

Mr Thng, who contested at Tampines GRC under the Workers’ Party (WP) banner, acknowledged in a July 5 social media post what PM Wong got right, such as his point concerning the challenging global environment Singapore currently faces.

He also agreed with the Prime Minister that the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) should welcome people who do not agree with everything it says. Mr Wong had called on young activists to “widen the circle,” and said that diversity in thinking “is essential for the PAP to keep renewing itself and to continue governing well for the longer term.” 

This is a point that Mr Thng wrote that he would champion, and he encouraged people who “hold genuinely different views on how Singapore should move forward” to join the ruling party.

“I would welcome its ranks being filled with people who think differently, and I would welcome a PAP where dissent is not merely tolerated but given real positions of influence,” he wrote.

However, the former candidate took exception to how Mr Wong had used the argument “to make the case for continued PAP dominance,” and unpacked this line of thinking.

“The logic on offer is roughly this: because the competition that matters is out there, we should spend less energy competing with each other in here. This isn’t how competitiveness is built,” he wrote, comparing the situation to building excellent national sports teams, which does not happen when athletes stop competing at a domestic level to save their energy for international competitors.

On the contrary, they emerge as champions “because a brutal, competitive domestic league produces players sharp enough to succeed on the world stage.”

The same holds for businesses being able to excel at a global level, added Mr Thng.

“This is why I think PM Wong’s framing gets the causality backwards. It is precisely because Singapore is the underdog externally that we need real contestation internally – a Parliament where policy is genuinely tested before it is implemented, and innovated when needed, not simply rubberstamped; and an opposition with the standing and the numbers to make every policy earn its passage through scrutiny (and a media environment that complements the process),” he wrote.

Going on to address would-be PAP members wishing to serve Singapore, he encouraged them to do so, but cautioned against thinking that a country can be competitive with just one party.

“We need a real, structural competition of ideas across our political system because a party, like a muscle, atrophies without resistance. That’s not cynicism. That’s how anything stays sharp. And sharp we must remain,” he added. /TISG

Read also: WP’s Michael Thng: ‘We don’t want to be told that the sky is white when we see it is blue’