[SINGAPORE] The opposition Workers’ Party (WP) introduced four new faces on Thursday (Apr 17), including candidates who will join the teams for WP-held Sengkang GRC and Aljunied GRC.
Joining the Sengkang GRC team is Abdul Muhaimin Abdul Malik, 35, a senior property manager at Aljunied-Hougang Town Council. The mechanical engineering graduate from Nanyang Technological University said he has walked the ground in Sengkang since 2019.
“I know what it feels like to worry about your kids’ future, housing loans, daily expenses and whether you have enough during retirement,” he said, adding that Sengkang residents have shared such worries with him.
The four-person Sengkang GRC team was left one short after former MP Raeesah Khan resigned over her conduct in Parliament.
Joining the Aljunied GRC team is Kenneth Tiong, 36, director of tech startup Sensemake AI, who began volunteering with the WP in 2023.
Tiong has been “quite pivotal” in the Serangoon division of Aljunied GRC since early this year, said party chair Sylvia Lim. That was the division of former MP Leon Perera, who stepped down after an affair with party member Nicole Seah.
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Said Tiong: “Like many of our generation, I see the global technological revolution, but worry this future isn’t being built in Singapore.”
“I share a dream of making Singapore a place where we build that future through real home-grown innovation,” he added.
Asked if other new candidates might join the Aljunied GRC team, party chief Pritam Singh replied: “At this stage, I’m not going to rule anything out, but if there are any changes, they will be very minimal.”
More new faces
Singh introduced two other new faces who are former civil servants, without saying where they would contest. But he confirmed that they would not stand in Aljunied or Sengkang GRCs.
One was legal counsel Siti Alia Abdul Rahim Mattar, who joined WP as a volunteer a year ago.
She was previously legal counsel at the Monetary Authority of Singapore from 2008 to 2016, and has specialised in family and corporate litigation at a multinational corporation since 2017.
Siti Alia, who described herself as being from the “sandwiched generation”, said that she joined WP as she believes it is a “credible party that works hard to introduce policies that benefit Singaporeans”.
Also introduced was Eileen Chong, who currently works in the social impact sector, leading early childhood development, education and mental health portfolios.
Chong served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 2017 and 2024, where she covered Singapore’s bilateral relations with China, Thailand, the Philippines, and Laos.
Asked if the WP will gun for its medium-term objective of winning a third of the seats, Singh said that would not be the case in GE2025. With 97 seats at stake, this implies that the WP will not field more than 32 candidates.
Singh did not confirm how many candidates WP would field in total, but rejected a description of the slate as “significantly larger”.
On the criteria for candidates, Singh said: “We try to represent a broad church for people who want to serve Singapore and want to work for Singapore, and we try and find the best people we can.”
WP tries to find a good mix of people who can “add to the debate” and also feel comfortable engaging residents on the ground, he added.
As for how the party vets its candidates, Singh said that there is “no process that’s going to guarantee that something will not happen”.
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