Change must be in substance: Mrs Lim
my paper
Thu, May 12, 2011
TRANSFORMATION of the People’s Action
Party (PAP) has to manifest itself in substance and not just in
words, Mrs Lim Hwee Hua said yesterday as she announced her
departure from politics.
The Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office stressed that the
PAP needs to engage the people and listen
more.
“People expect to be consulted a whole lot more. And whoever is
looking after them, whether it is the Workers’ Party (WP) or the
PAP, they need to be really certain that they
are able to engage residents,” she said.
Mrs Lim, 52, who is Singapore’s first woman Cabinet minister,
made these points at a press conference at The Treasury where she
told reporters that she would be retiring from the political
arena.
She contested in the five-member Aljunied Group Representation
Constituency (GRC) in the recent General Election. The team lost to
the WP by 9.44 percentage points after taking into account overseas
votes.
Her announcement came a day after Foreign Minister George Yeo,
who helmed the PAP team, said that he would
not contest in the next election and refuted rumours that he would
run for the Elected Presidency later this year.
On the loss of Aljunied, Mrs Lim said it was a surprise to the
PAP team that “the resentment…and unhappiness
is so deep”. She said that there will always be gaps in the way
residents were served, but that the outcome would have remained the
same as it was a “national battle”.
Mrs Lim, who is also Second Minister for Finance and Transport,
said that she will be 57 years old in five years’ time and would
leave it to someone younger to contest in the 2016 election.
She added that she has served for almost 15 years, a period of
time which she deems a “reasonable stretch”, though she admitted
that the end of her political career was “more abrupt…than
expected”.
With her departure, there will be no woman minister in the
Cabinet. However, she said that with more women entering
Parliament, she is confident that “it won’t be too long before
another female full Cabinet minister is appointed”.
On her immediate plans, Mrs Lim said that she would first take a
break for the next few months before deciding what to do in the
future.
“There is no shortage of possibilities. Some of these would
include a return to the financial or corporate sector where I came
from,” she said.
Mrs Lim was a managing director at Temasek Holdings from 2000 to
2004.
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