SINGAPORE: Former Workers’ Party chief Low Thia Khiang was out and about last weekend with WP members and volunteers again, this time at Kovan, Punggol, and Tampines for the distribution of Hammer, the party’s newsletter.
The WP posted photos of the outing on its Facebook page on Tuesday (Feb 4), and Mr Low can be prominently seen in the first two pictures.
Mr Low, 69, who is Singapore’s longest-serving opposition Member of Parliament and was the de facto Leader of the Opposition between 2006 and 2018, announced in 2020 that he would no longer he would not seek reelection.
Since then, he has remained on the WP’s Central Executive Committee, but has, for the most part, remained behind the scenes.
Recently, however, he has been seen more and more on the ground. For example, Mr Low was seen in a photo standing between current WP chief Pritam Singh and Sengkang MP He Ting Ru on Jan 12, and on Jan 19, he was also present during the Hammer outreach at Serangoon and Jalan Kayu.
Mr Low’s continued attendance at on-the-ground activities is not going unnoticed, and some commenters are wondering, and even calling for, a comeback.
“Ask Mr Low to make a comeback in 2030. Lead a team in East Coast or Marine Parade,” wrote a Facebook user.
Another agreed, saying that his “29 years’ experience as opposition MP can bring in many votes at a new GRC.”
A Facebook user who also agreed simply wrote, “Mr Low should come back.”
In 2020, Mr Low and fellow MPs Chen Show Mao and Png Eng Huat said they would not be contesting that year’s General Election to make way for younger leaders of the party.
In 2024, when asked by a resident if he would be fielded as a candidate again, he replied that he was already retired, adding that he would not participate in the next GE.
He also said, “We got a younger generation that can move the party forward. They can do much better than me.”
Whether or not Mr Low will come out of retirement is unknown at this point, but what is perhaps more likely is that he is lending support to the party he helped shape and build over the past decades, at a time when its current leader has been beleaguered.
Mr Singh is Singapore’s first official Leader of the Opposition, having been appointed by then-Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong after the General Election in 2020, when the WP won its second GRC and the number of opposition MPs reached double digits in Singapore for the first time.
On Jan 14, however, Parliament passed a motion deeming Mr Singh unfit for the position in the wake of the High Court dismissal of his appeal concerning his conviction for lying to a parliamentary committee.
He was removed from his position by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong the following day. While PM Wong asked the Workers’ Party’s Central Executive Committee to nominate another WP MP for the position, they declined, a move that many netizens approved of. /TISG
Read also: Spotted: Ex-WP boss Low Thia Khiang on the ground at Hougang
