Yee Jenn Jong: Hopefully Pritam Singh will leave a strong legacy of his place in Singapore politics

SINGAPORE: Former Workers’ Party (WP) Non-constituency Member of Parliament Yee Jenn Jong said in a June 29 Facebook post that when he was recently asked who the best leader in the party is, in his opinion, it’s former WP chief Low Thia Khiang, at least so far.

However, Mr Yee believes that “the best is yet to be,” and he added that for current chief Pritam Singh, “the story is still ongoing… and he could yet make more breakthroughs if given a couple more parliamentary terms.”

Mr Yee put up his post one day after it was announced that Pritam Singh had kept his position as the Secretary-General of the WP. The beleaguered Aljunied MP had survived a secret vote during a special cadres meeting on June 28, convened under a requisition from 25 cadres.

In announcing the results, WP conference chair Gerald Giam, Mr Singh’s fellow MP at Aljunied, said that the result of the voting was “well in excess of the supermajority,” and sources said that Mr Singh had support from around 80% among the 107 cadres who had attended the meeting. He was then voted in as secretary-general for the fifth consecutive time since he first took over the post from Mr Low.

Mr Yee, who recently published his second book about the WP, StepUp: The Workers’ Party of Singapore 2.0, explained that the book’s publication had been delayed pending the outcome of Mr Singh’s challenges after having been found guilty of two counts of lying to a parliamentary committee early last year. While Mr Singh appealed the verdict, it was dismissed by the High Court last December.

This was followed by his removal as Leader of the Opposition, and the WP’s internal disciplinary panel into the matter, as well as disciplinary proceedings from the Law Society of Singapore.

“Singh is the key figure in the current WP and anything affecting him would drastically change the analysis we had put in the book,” wrote Mr Yee, adding that in April, he decided to go ahead and publish the book and that the result of the WP’s June  28 conference justified the analysis he had written in the book of Mr Singh’s years as the WP chief.

He posted an excerpt of the analysis in his post, which includes: “Singh may yet try to use the same approach in the next general election: putting up the strongest possible slate of candidates and configuring them for possible wins in all the races. He has shown his willingness to field new and young candidates if they have the right attitude and can uphold the party’s 3Rs branding. Hopefully his boldness in contesting to win will secure positive results and allow Singh to leave a strong legacy of his place in Singapore politics.” /TISG

Read also: New book by EX-NCMP Yee Jenn Jong explores the Workers’ Party’s past, present, and future