SINGAPORE: At a press conference on Thursday (April 17), The Workers’ Party launched an initial group of candidates for the General Election on May 3.
The four candidates introduced by WP secretary-general Pritam Singh and chair Sylvia Lim are Eileen Chong Pei Shan, Siti Alia Binte Abdul Rahim Mattar, Abdul Muhaimin Abdul Malik, and Kenneth Tiong.
So far, the response to the new candidates has been positive, especially since one of them is a former diplomat who had served with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and another is a legal practitioner who had served with the Monetary Authority of Singapore
Moreover, the WP leaders confirmed speculations that have been made concerning where Mr Muhaimin and Mr Tiong will contest. The former will be joining the WP slate at Sengkang GRC, while the latter will be with Mr Singh and Ms Lim at Aljunied GRC.
Where Ms Chong and Ms Alia will be fielded by the WP has yet to be announced. What the public learned today about the two women concerns their background and credentials.
Ms Chong, 33, joined the WP in the latter part of 2024, participating in house visits in Bedok Reservoir and Kovan. At present, she is a volunteer caseworker at Meet-the-People Sessions in Aljunied with MP Gerald Giam.
She currently works in the social impact sector at the Asia Philanthropy Circle. Her years at the MFA include a stint at the Singapore Embassy in Beijing from 2020 to 2023. While with the ministry, she covered Singapore’s bilateral ties with China, Thailand, the Philippines, and Laos.
Ms Alia, 43, also joined the WP last year and has been part of the ground team, doing house visits as well as engaging residents on concerns and feedback. She has also helped with organising Ramadan and Hari Raya activities.
While she works today as a legal counsel in a multinational corporation, focusing on family and corporate litigation, from 2008 to 2016, she served in the Legal Department at the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Mr Tiong, 36, is a tech entrepreneur. He has been the director of news intelligence platform Sensemake.ai, since 2023. As WP’s Serangoon coordinator, he has been featured by Ms Lim in her social media posts about activities in the ward. He started volunteering for the party in 2023, contributing to the policy team and assisting in East Coast, Bedok Reservoir-Punggol, as well as Serangoon, and officially became a member that year.
Among the four new candidates, Mr Muhaimin has been with the WP the longest, as he started with volunteering for house visits in 2019 and went on to serve as a polling agent and counting agent for the party in GE2020. He has also been the de facto coordinator for Compassvale in Segkang GRC since February 2023, and is active within the Workers’ Party policy team.
He is also a former SCDF platoon commander and works today as a senior property manager in Aljunied-Hougang Town Council.
The initial response to the introduction of the WP’s new candidates has been positive, with one commenter calling them “people with real-world and ground experience, compared to parachuted paper generals.”
Ms Chong, in particular, has generated no small amount of interest, especially due to her previous stint at the MFA.
“Interesting, didn’t expect they managed to recruit a former MFA diplomat to stand for election, none of the news even mentioned her so far. WP could have some hidden candidates who everyone does not know yet,” a commenter observed.
A Reddit user wrote, “WP has a thing about introducing their weaker candidates first and the strongest candidates at the very end. But these are really outstanding people.”
Another chimed in with, “Wow, Pritam really has a lot of cards up his sleeve… Seems like the Leader of the Opposition is appealing to a much more diverse pool of candidates, and is looking like the leader that people want to follow.” /TISG
Read also: ‘Solid team’: Singaporeans impressed with calibre of WP’s new candidates for GE2025
