Has the opposition gone
Awol?
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong says the Workers' Party team at
Aljunied GRC has been absent without official leave. PEH SHING HUEI
finds out
Straits Times, The
(Singapore)
Insight, Pg S13
November 17, 2007
MR SEBASTIAN Teo believes Singapore politics suffers from a widely
held fallacy - that the opposition emerges only when elections roll
around.
'When I'm on the ground talking to people, what I hear is the
complete opposite,' says the National Solidarity Party (NSP)
president.
'The voters tell me that their PAP MPs only shake their hands once
every five years!'
Be that as it may, there is a persistent perception in local
politics that the opposition parties are rarely heard, much less
seen, until the polls come a-knocking.
Is this traditional malaise of the opposition an urban myth or
heartland reality?
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, as leader of the ruling People's
Action Party (PAP), believes it is the latter, opening the debate
far earlier than usual.
At last Sunday's PAP convention, a member asked how the party
intended to defend Aljunied given Workers' Party MP Low Thia
Khiang's recent declaration that his party intended to gun for a
GRC in the next polls. Aljunied GRC was the most closely fought
constituency in last year's General Election.
In his response, Mr Lee said that the PAP MPs there were working
hard and quipped that the WP team had gone Awol - absent without
official leave.
It was a play on the term The Straits Times had given the WP
Aljunied slate when the newspaper gave the label Team A to the
five-man team led by party chairman Sylvia Lim.
'Our (PAP) five men are working hard, but the opposition's five
have scattered like monkeys when the tree fell,' he said in
Mandarin, using a Chinese proverb.
'One of them has run to Sweden, the other has left the WP. They
called it their A team, I say it is A for Awol,' he added.
Ms Lim took issue with Mr Lee's choice of words.
'I don't think Awol is an appropriate term to use in the first
place, as the WP has no official capacity in Aljunied GRC at the
moment,' she tells Insight.
But is it true that the opposition is missing in action on the
ground?
Where are they now?
A YEAR and a half after the heat of the election, many opposition
candidates have indeed taken a breather.
The WP, which produced the strongest slate among the opposition
parties, has seen at least seven of its most prominent young
candidates leaving the frontline.
The Team A that garnered 43.9 per cent of the valid votes has lost
three of its five men.
Researcher James Gomez, 41, is working in Sweden; financial
controller Tan Wui-Hua, 40, is based in the United Arab Emirates;
and businessman Goh Meng Seng, 37, left the party late last year
and is now with the NSP.
Only Ms Lim and vice-chairman Mohammed Rahizan Yaacob are still
working the ground in Aljunied GRC.
Over at East Coast GRC, the second-best performing WP team has lost
its firepower.
Lawyer Chia Ti Lik, 34, who led the team to pull in 36.1 per cent
of the votes, quit the WP last year after disagreements with party
leaders over Internet regulations.
While his team-mate, Mr Brandon Siow, 32, remains in the party's
executive central council as webmaster, he took up a posting in
Shanghai with Singapore Airlines not long after the
elections.
The party's youth wing secretary, Ms Glenda Han, 31, is working in
Hong Kong, while business manager Lian Chin Way, 37, is not
involved in party work.
At the NSP, the fallout rate is just as high.
Only engineer Tan Lead Shake, 38, and business adviser Ong Hock
Siong, 60, from among its five-man team in Tampines are still
active. Team leader Arthero Lim, 52, is working in China.
Mr Edmund Ng, 34, has left the party and Mr Abdul Rahman Mohamad,
55, is working overseas.
The same is true for its Jalan Besar team, with three members of
the quintet - including former opposition MP Cheo Chai Chen -
taking a backseat.
Similarly, Mr Chiam See Tong' Singapore People's Party has been
almost invisible at Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC where it took on Defence
Minister Teo Chee Hean's team last year.
That is not to say the opposition is nowhere to be seen. The WP
still sells its Hammer newsletter weekly in places such as Hougang
and Aljunied GRC. Members of the NSP - donning luminous orange
tops, the party's new colour - are also seen across the island
every weekend selling the party's newsletter, North Star
News.
Presence counts
THE opposition offers a robust defence of why its members need to
take a break from politics.
The main argument is that the PAP MPs have a well-oiled machinery
to support their grassroots work and, on top of that, they receive
a monthly sum of $13,200 for being elected. Opposition candidates
find it far harder to juggle earning a living and doing political
work.
WP organising secretary Yaw Shin Leong wrote on his blog: 'Unlike
their paid counterparts, James Gomez and Tan Wui-Hua...have been
working hard in Sweden and Dubai respectively.
'Both James and Wui-Hua are doing what is right - by bringing bread
and butter first and foremost to their families.'
Ms Sylvia Lim says that it is the reality of an increasingly
globalised world that many young people go overseas to earn a
living. 'It would not be fair for us to stop people taking overseas
stints, as each of us needs to earn a living and has to answer to
the stakeholders in our lives,' she adds.
'What is important is that the party presence is maintained and
potential candidates put in their fair share.'
Dr Terence Chong of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies says
it is a 'thankless task' being in the opposition in
Singapore.
'You have to worry about social stigma, your employers especially
if you work in a GLC (government-linked company), and an uneven
playing field. If you're a new PAP candidate, on the other hand,
you're virtually guaranteed of a place in Parliament if you're in a
GRC,' he says.
'Comparing PAP MPs and opposition candidates is like comparing
apples and oranges.'
Aljunied GRC resident Mato Kotwani, 20, is not too perturbed that
some of the WP candidates are not around.
'If they just gave up and left, it's not very responsible. But if
they left to get on with their lives, I don't have an issue if they
still want to come back and fight at the next election,' says the
student.
'Even if they were in Singapore they wouldn't be able to do very
much for the estate because they are not even MPs.'
Indeed, voters take it almost as a given that the opposition is not
likely to maintain the same level of presence as the ruling party
in the years between elections. How else does one account for the
opposition's ability to attract votes even when members have hardly
shown up before the polls?
But the value of working the ground should not be discounted at
all, say observers. Visibility is important, they say.
Another reason candidates and their parties lie low also appears to
be for self-preservation purposes, to avoid the ruling party
unleashing its entire force on the opposition members, thoroughly
discrediting a candidate well ahead of the polls.
In short, they have learnt the Chee Soon Juan lesson too well. The
Singapore Democratic Party chief's high-profile sparrings with the
Government saw him thoroughly demolished ahead of the General
Election in 1997.
