Popular Workers’ Party politician Nicole Seah took to social media to write about an encounter with a party supporter in Simei wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘HAMMER STRENGTH.’
While on house visits on Thursday night with Mr Kenneth Foo and Mr Abdul Shariff Aboo Kassim, Ms Seah, who heads WP’s youth wing and is a member of the party’s Central Executive Committee, said she was “quite amused and cheered” to see the shirt that the supporter had coincidentally worn that night.
The hammer, after all, is a widely-recognized WP symbol.
Ms Seah, 36, is a mother of two young girls, with her latest child born earlier this year.
She went on to list examples of “hammer strength” she had seen among the residents they visited that night.
“One was a working mum who had ended a long day at work and was in high spirits as she strove to put her active toddler to bed, in preparation for the school day tomorrow.
Another was a caregiver who was taking care of an adult daughter with significant mental health challenges.”
Ms Seah went on to comment on the “invisible labour” that these residents perform, caregiving, which usually goes by unrecognised.
“We would go much farther as a society if we duly recognise and remunerate the hammer strength of women and men who uphold the stability and well-being (of) their families,” she added.
Ms Seah, Mr Foo and Mr Aboo Kassim have been active at East Coast GRC for some years now. Together with Mr Terence Tan and Mr Dylan Ng, they composed the WP slate there during GE2020, losing narrowly to a People’s Action Party team headed by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat.
The PAP team won 53.39 per cent of the vote against the WP’s 46.61 per cent.
Ms Seah, who had only been 24 when she first contested in the 2011 General Election in Marine Parade GRC under the National Solidarity Party, gained enormous popularity for her intelligence and speaking ability, to the point of being dubbed a “rockstar” by The Straits Times. Her party, the NSP, was sometimes even known as the Nicole Seah Party.
Her team lost to the incumbents that year but gained a respectable 43.35 per cent vote share, which many, including Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, who had anchored the PAP’s Marine Parade slate for many years, credited to her.
Ms Seah resigned from NSP in 201 and then started volunteering with the WP the following year, becoming a member afterwards. /TISG