Setting the record straight

A CNY event organized by the PAP team at Eunos got WP's CEC member Kenneth Foo Seck Guan so upset that he ranted on his facebook and made a baseless allegation about taxpayers' money being used.

And then The Independent Singapore, proxy for WP, jumped in to help publish his rant UNDER THE GUISE of a WP supporter.

Why can't WP at least be honest about who they are instead of pretending to be a ignorant supporter making a false allegation?

We know Kenneth Foo Seck Guan is no supporter. He is part of WP's CEC and also stood for election as WP's candidate for Nee Soon GRC.

The CNY event was a success and a grateful Mr Chua Eng Leong has thanked all patrons, partners and grassroots leaders for their support in helping to bring joy to a few hundred needy residents.

The Independent Singapore caught lying again!

Proxy for WP, The Independent Singapore, founded and run by Leon Perera, has done it again.

This time to make a baseless allegation and a lie.

First, the event was NOT funded by taxpayers' money. Mr Chua Eng Leong had to raise funds for the event. Patrons and sponsors were happy to contribute to this event because 400 pioneers and needy residents were invited. Additionally, the event is also funded by PAP charity arm called PCF (PAP Community Foundation).

The Independent claimed that the allegation was made by a WP supporter.

Kenneth Foo Seck Guan is NOT a WP supporter. He IS a member of WP's CEC and a treasurer, Aljunied Constituency Committee. He was also WP's candidate for Nee Soon GRC. How could it be that The Independent does not know?

Making baseless allegations is very easy. It is definitely not the alternative to putting in the effort to raise funds to organize activities that can benefit their residents.

Leon Perera's The Independent Singapore caught misleading their readers.

Once again, The Independent Singapore (TISG), founded and run by Leon Perera of Workers' Party, attempts to mislead their readers with a misleading status and a false headline.

The status gives the impression that the Marine Parade MPs have redrawn their ELECTORAL boundaries after the election while the headline screams 'blatant lawlessness'.

This isn't what a responsible opposition would do. Wonder why the proxy for WP is doing that.

Let's get the facts straight.

Under the law, every MP in a GRC has an equal responsibility for the whole GRC and not only of a particular ward.

Within a GRC, MPs have the discretion to sub-divide the constituency among themselves and give names to the INTERNAL SUB-DIVISIONS, sometimes informally known as wards.

The purpose of such internal divisions is to enable the MPs to better serve the residents. And this was exactly what the MPs of Marine Parade GRC had done.

This isn't even anything new. And this isn't something that only PAP MPs can do.

#honestyisthebestpolicy
#ahalftruthisawholelie
#farfrombeingcredible

Reference:
http://ourstory.asia1.com.sg/dream/politics/ref/grc1.html

WP, where do you stand?

I refer to Mr Low Thia Khiang’s letter <<With the big picture in mind>> published in Zaobao on 12 Feb 2016. In his letter, Mr Low goes to great lengths to repeat WP’s criticism of the NCMP scheme, portraying it as a scheme designed to get opposition to endorse the PAP.

However, Mr Low fails to address properly the fatal flaw in WP’s stance on the scheme. If the WP truly believes that NCMP seats are second class and that the scheme benefits only the PAP, why does it continue to accept the NCMP seats?

Mr Low claims that WP did so because it believes that a responsible party should work within the system. To this end, he even cited how Mr Lee Kuan Yew contested in the 1955 general election held in Singapore under the Rendel Constitution despite openly criticising the Constitution as undemocratic.

It is true that the PAP did not support the Rendel Constitution. How could it, when it was fighting to overthrow British colonialism? But the PAP and Mr Lee Kuan Yew never pretended that it wasn't worth participating in the legal, constitutional process. Nor did they put down their positions in the Legislative Assembly as Mr Low did when he said that being an NCMP was equivalent to being duckweed. On the contrary, Mr Lee accepted his limited position in the Legislative Assembly then to build up the PAP to eventually take over the govt.

The PAP is not objecting to the WP's position on the NCMP scheme. It is objecting to the sheer hypocrisy of its behaviour -- saying one thing and doing another; and speaking from both sides of its mouth. The actions of WP’s leaders today cannot be compared to the actions of that of PAP’s leaders in 1955.

If WP is serious about its promise to build up an alternative political force, it will do well to emulate the actions of the PAP pioneers.

First, WP can do so by acknowledging that WP is accepting the NCMP seats because it benefits them and their ultimate goal of expanding their political influence. Mr Low should not deny that Ms Sylvia Lim made good use of her “duckweed status” between 2006 and 2011 to help WP win a GRC in 2011. Mr Low should also not deny that WP is even now benefiting from the NCMP scheme as it can profile three of its young leaders in parliament.

Second, it cannot be the ruling party’s responsibility to give the opposition ground for them to grow and bloom. Through the NCMP scheme, the Government has already done its part to provide for diversity in parliament in accordance to the wishes of the voters. It is up to WP to reap the ground and convince voters to allow WP to sink its roots in constituencies. It is not impossible for the opposition to gain ground, as WP proved when it won Aljunied GRC in 2011.

In conclusion, Mr Low Thia Khiang can continue to try to muddle the issue, but actions speak louder than words. A gentleman’s action is true to his beliefs, WP’s action of dismissing the NCMP scheme as a PAP ploy while accepting NCMP seats is that of a hypocrite’s.

Low Thia Khiang: Principled or self-serving?

So, in 2011, to register his strong opposition to the NCMP scheme, Mr Low Thia Khiang declared he would resign if forced by his party - Workers' Party of which he is the leader - to take up a NCMP seat.

But in 2016, he declared it his DUTY as the leader of Workers' Party to nominate the next best volunteer when the elected NCMP was unable to take up the seat.

What do you make of that?

A man so strongly opposed to the NCMP scheme that he would rather resign than take it up himself, but he also considered it his duty as the leader of WP to nominate people to fill the NCMP seat.

Principled or self-serving?

The answer is very obvious.

"In light of the Government’s proposal to increase the number of NCMPs (from nine to 12) and for them to have the same voting rights as elected MPs, the WP should not permit its members to accept NCMP seats when offered in future...... It will also make the WP’s objection to the NCMP scheme principled and not self-serving." - Associate Professor Eugene Tan, SMU

See also: 

https://www.facebook.com/notes/singapore-matters/say-what-you-mean-do-what-you-say/935590879860639

The Victim Game By Lee Li Lian

 In her Facebook post, WP’s Lee Li Lian attempts to show Singaporeans that opposition MPs play with the deck stacked against them.

To do this, Lee Li Lian showed a screenshot in which she was supposedly denied permission to hold a so-called “Charity Event”.

What Lee Li Lian (and her fellow WP MP) failed to do was tell the full truth.

Firstly, the timing is strangely convenient.

Lee Li Lian's email to request for permission was sent on 27 Jan 2016 for an event that is planned for 30 Jan 2016. Even the most expedient processing would take at least 1 day and a response provided on the 28th. This will then give Li Lian and her Team less than 2 days to publicize the event and make all the necessary arrangements.

It is obvious that her request for permission was a last minute ploy to portray the HDB/ Government in a negative light.

Secondly, permission for political events requires a police permit and the HDB has been consistent that no political party can hold events in public areas.

What Lee Li Lian is alluding to are the various Grassroots events organized by the People’s Association. What Lee Li Lian failed to tell Singaporeans is that the WP have been organizing events under the name of Lions Befriender who are their main sponsors.

Why did she suddenly choose to organize the event as a political event? Once again, it is a deliberate attempt to mislead Singaporean.

Look who is playing politics to score political points? If you cannot be trusted to do small things right, can you be trusted to do the big things?

Adapted from: http://wpofsingapore.blogspot.sg/2016/01/wp-lee-li-lian-decision-vacate-ncmp-seat.html

Photo credit: WPofSingapore.blogspot.sg

Upholding the integrity of the NCMP Scheme

Last Friday’s combative parliamentary debate on filling Ms Lee Li Lian’s vacated Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) seat offered a foretaste of the dynamics between the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) and the Workers’ Party’s (WP) in the 13th Parliament.

The transfer of an NCMP seat within an opposition party has no precedent. The closest similarity happened in 1985, when the People’s Action Party (PAP) moved a motion to fill the vacated NCMP seat after WP’s M P D Nair had declined it after the 1984 General Election (GE). It was then offered to Singapore United Front’s Tan Chee Kien, who also declined the seat. Parliament then opted to keep NCMP seat empty even though it was the first time the NCMP scheme was introduced.

It is perhaps timely to relook the law governing the filling of vacated NCMP seats. Currently, the law provides that Parliament may fill a vacated NCMP seat. This should be changed to make the filling of a vacated seat automatic without Parliament having to decide whether to fill the vacated seat or not.

Secondly, the law should prohibit “intra-party” transfer of seats (as with the Lee Li Lian and Daniel Goh situation). This precludes parties engaging in a “political manoeuvre”, in the words of Government Whip Chan Chun Sing in last Friday’s debate.

The overall intent of both proposals is to ensure the integrity of the NCMP scheme. The first avoids a situation where an NCMP seat is left vacant for whatever reasons at the will of the ruling party. The second prevents a situation where an opposition party can act anti-democratically by thwarting the expressed political choice of the electorate.

There is a tendency to overlook the democratic element that underpins the NCMP scheme. The Parliamentary Elections Act provides that the NCMP seats are to be filled on the basis of the percentage of the votes polled in a general election (the so-called “best losers” requirement). Clearly, the voters’ preference is determinative with regards to the filling of NCMP seats.

Opposition parties should not be allowed to go against the choice of voters in filling NCMP seats because that is tantamount to letting a party, rather than the voters, decide on the NCMPs. This enables an opposition party to place a NCMP out of self-interest rather than respecting the expressed will of the voters, contrary to what the Constitution requires.

This was the essence of PAP’s amendment of WP’s parliamentary motion for Associate Professor Daniel Goh to fill Ms Lee’s vacated NCMP seat at last Friday’s debate.

In a tactically shrewd move — cognisant of public sentiment supporting Parliament having its full complement of three NCMP seats — the PAP took advantage of its numerical dominance in Parliament to amend the WP motion to reflect the point that the WP was making a “political manoeuvre” to take full advantage of the NCMP scheme, even as WP secretary-general Low Thia Khiang had been dismissive of the scheme.

In so doing, the PAP also sought to establish it was acting from a principled stance in which the WP should not ride roughshod over the preference of Punggol East voters.

It is worth recalling that in the September 2015 GE, 48.23 per cent of voters in Punggol East voted for then-incumbent Ms Lee, while only 39.27 per cent of East Coast GRC voters supported the WP team there, which included Dr Goh and three candidates.

To the extent that the NCMP derives its currency from seeking to maintain Parliament’s relevance in a one-party dominant system, it is clear that the NCMP has benefited both the PAP and the WP.

For the PAP, having a nominal, if not minimum, representation of opposition parliamentarians helps ensure that Parliament is more representative than it otherwise would be, and is better able to act as a check and balance in our constitutional system of government.

Most significantly, the NCMP scheme also helps assure the Singaporean electorate that it should not be overly concerned with Parliament being dominated by the PAP, since there will be a guaranteed minimum number of non-PAP MPs.

For all intents and purposes, the WP has benefited from strategically utilising the NCMP scheme even as Mr Low derisively described NCMPs as rootless “duckweed on the water of a pond”. Its official stance — faithfully and consistently reflected in the party’s election manifestos — is that it is opposed to the scheme and would abolish the scheme if it were the Government. The WP’s premise is that elections should not dilute the individual voter’s voice and should therefore only be run on single member seats, with individual MPs fully accountable to constituents.

However, in reality, the WP adopts a different reasoning when it says that it would accept an eligible WP candidate’s decision to take up a NCMP seat so as to contribute to parliamentary debates and because “the struggle for a functional democracy … must be fought from within the existing system”.

The scheme has enabled the WP to profile itself and its NCMPs while also providing more opportunities toraise parliamentary questions, debate Bills, file motions and speak on PAP motions.

Besides M P D Nair and Ms Lee, WP losing candidates in the past have accepted NCMP seats: Lee Siew Choh (1989-1991), JB Jeyaretnam (1997-2001), Ms Sylvia Lim (2006-2011), Mr Yee Jen Jong and Mr Gerald Giam (2011-2015), and their current three NCMPs.

There needs, in my view, to be greater clarity and consistency in the WP’s position on the NCMP scheme. In light of the Government’s proposal to increase the number of NCMPs (from nine to 12) and for them to have the same voting rights as elected MPs, the WP should not permit its members to accept NCMP seats when offered in future. Given the WP’s severe criticisms of the scheme, surely it cannot have its cake and eat it, too.

This will raise the stakes for voters in constituencies where the WP’s best candidates are contesting. It will also make the WP’s objection to the NCMP scheme principled and not self-serving. The artificial distinction between the party’s vehement objection to and an individual WP member’s inclination to take up an NCMP seat is an untenable proposition going forward.

By:

Eugene K B Tan is associate professor of law at the School of Law, Singapore Management University, and a former Nominated Member of Parliament.

How about a WP vs WP debate?

In the US, Donald Trump flip flopped so much that Stephen Colbert hosted a Trump vs. Trump debate recently.

Here in Singapore, in addition to flip flopping, members of the WP contradict each other and themselves so many times that it is also possible to host a WP vs WP debate.

So why do they contradict each other so often? Because they are rhetorical people saying what is convenient for the moment and what sounds good for your ears. The ground they stand on is shifting sand.

What they actually do is another matter altogether.

Just one example:

LTK vs LTK (Proposition: NCMPs have no political muscles)

LTK: NCMPs are duckweed without political muscles.
LTK: NCMPs can contribute to debates and influence policy outcomes.

And now we have Leon vs LTK.
Leon says, let's not score political points endlessly.
But chief LTK said politicians must have the political acumen to score political points.

Photo credit: Fabrications About The PAP