SINGAPORE: In a Facebook post from earlier this week, Jamus Lim made a rare comment referring to Raeesah Khan, saying the party should have moved on from these events a long time ago.
Assoc Prof Lim hence commented on the issues raised in Parliament this month.
“When an already-dominant political party receives a boost of political capital via an impressive ballot-box performance, one can hardly fault the party for spending it. That’s perhaps why a nontrivial amount of parliament time this month had been preoccupied with what I regard as largely political theatre,” he wrote.
The Sengkang MP then added that he believes “we should have moved on from the events of Raeesahgate a long time ago,” and that many others he has spoken to share the same feeling.
Nevertheless, he wrote that the WP “will keep working to serve the people by doing what we were elected to do: offer constructive critique of existing policies, provide creative suggestions for how policies may be improved, and be a check on policy directions that may have gone awry.”
Raeesah Khan is the Workers’ Party MP who stepped down in late 2021 following revelations that she had lied in Parliament more than once. While this occurred several years ago, the scandal around Ms Khan has unfortunately had far-reaching effects on the WP, especially on its leadership. Party chief Pritam Singh was found guilty of two counts of lying to a parliamentary committee on February 17, 2025, and though he filed an appeal, the verdict was upheld by the High Court last month.
On Jan 14, a motion was passed in Parliament deeming Mr Singh unsuitable as Leader of the Opposition, and on the following day, he was removed from the position by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong.
On Dec 17, Leader of the House Indranee Rajah, who filed the motion leading to Mr Singh’s removal, also said that how WP chair Sylvia Lim and vice-chair Faisal Manap conducted themselves in connection with Ms Khan’s case would also be raised for discussion in Parliament.
Worries over cost of living
In his Jan 28 Facebook post, Assoc Prof Lim, who in 2020 was elected together with Ms Khan at Sengkang and took over some of her duties in the wake of the scandal, talked about some recent conversations he had with residents, something he normally posts about.
They shared with him their worries over the cost of living, which he called an ever-present concern given the uncertainty of these times, the challenges to Singapore’s economic progress, the rising healthcare costs of its ageing population, and wealth inequality.
Pressing issues taking a back seat to politics?
Of late, there appear to be others on social media who have felt that cost-of-living concerns have taken a back seat to politics.
A Facebook user wrote, “There are more pressing issues, and yet they spent so much time and resources just to shut someone down.”
Another, meanwhile, opined that in spite of news of robust economic growth, “common Singaporeans can tell you the bleak prospects they are facing on the ground.”
A local Reddit user also weighed in on the issues discussed in Parliament, saying that they felt these were “really divorced from bread-and-butter issues,” while another wrote that the debate concerning Mr Singh had been “a massive waste of time and energy which could have been spent debating issues like public transport, cost of living, employment crisis, etc.” /TISG
Read related: Is Singapore prioritising politics over cost-of-living issues? Singaporeans express concern
