WP leaders Pritam Singh, Sylvia Lim retain posts; former MP Lee Li Lian returns to CEC
WORKERS’ Party (WP) secretary-general Pritam Singh and chairwoman Sylvia Lim were returned to their posts at the party’s biennial conference on Jun 30, paving the way for them to lead the opposition party into the next general election (GE).
The party’s cadres also re-elected the other WP MPs into the central executive committee (CEC), along with former party chief Low Thia Khiang, 68, in an internal election marked by continuity.
The MPs are Aljunied GRC MPs Faisal Manap, 49, and Gerald Giam, 47; Sengkang GRC MPs He Ting Ru, 41, Louis Chua, 37, and Jamus Lim, 48; and Hougang MP Dennis Tan, 54.
Party sources told The Straits Times that Lim, 59, was again challenged by long-time WP member Tan Bin Seng but prevailed with about two-thirds of the vote to retain the post of party chair, which she has held since 2003.
Singh, 48, returned unopposed.
There was a new addition to the CEC – former Punggol East MP Lee Li Lian, 46, who had stepped down from the party’s top decision-making body in 2020. The CEC line-up remains unchanged, apart from Lee returning.
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She was MP for Punggol East from 2013 to 2015, before ceding the single seat to PAP MP Charles Chong in the 2015 General Election. Punggol East became part of the newly formed Sengkang GRC in 2020, and Lee is currently a town councillor on the WP-run Sengkang Town Council.
Rounding out the 14-member line-up are former GE candidates Nathaniel Koh, 41, and Kenneth Foo, 47; Tan Kong Soon, 47, and Ang Boon Yaw, 42, a lawyer who started volunteering with the party in 2012.
About 80 cadres cast their votes at the closed-door conference held at the Huone meeting and event venue in Clarke Quay on Jun 30.
Speaking to reporters after the conference, Singh said it was a “fantastic result”. “We are looking forward to working with this CEC for the next two years,” he added.
In a statement, WP said it will announce the CEC appointments in due course. “The new CEC has taken office, with a mix of members of different ages and backgrounds; and has started work with immediate effect.”
In the past six months, WP has stepped up its outreach efforts, going to its usual stamping grounds to sell its Hammer newsletter and also making more house visits in areas it has contested in the past.
The upcoming GE, due by November 2025, will be Singh’s second at the helm.
In his first election outing as WP chief in 2020, the party achieved a watershed victory in Sengkang GRC, only the second such multi-member constituency to be won by an opposition party. The WP had first achieved the feat in 2011, when it pulled off a shock defeat of the People’s Action Party in Aljunied GRC.
After the 2020 election, Singh was made Leader of the Opposition.
But he has faced several crises in the past few years, most recently when he was charged in March 2024 with lying to a parliamentary committee.
The committee was investigating the conduct of Raeesah Khan, 30, then a WP MP for Sengkang GRC, after she admitted to lying in Parliament about a sexual assault victim being treated shabbily by the police.
Singh was asked in December 2021 about the matter by the committee, which later found that he had lied and referred the matter to the public prosecutor.
In 2023, Singh also had to deal with the emergence online of a video clip that showed two key WP leaders, Leon Perera, 53, and Nicole Seah, 37, sharing an intimate moment.
Perera, who was then an Aljunied GRC MP, and Seah, who was part of the WP East Coast GRC team in the 2020 GE, eventually left the party over the incident.
Sunday’s uneventful election signals that the party has closed ranks behind Singh’s leadership.
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