The Straits Times’ article, “Election spotlight: Close fight to decide if Workers’ Party keeps Sengkang or PAP wins it”, presents a picture of electoral balance — but its framing fails to reflect the political reality on the ground.
Instead of confronting the ruling party’s strategic retreat from Sengkang GRC, the piece distracts with superficial campaign narratives, selective resident quotes, and municipal nitpicking.
The result reads less like fair reporting and more like a calculated effort to undermine the Workers’ Party (WP)’s incumbency without explicitly saying so.
This becomes immediately apparent when looking at what the article chooses to omit. It makes no mention of the most obvious signal: that the People’s Action Party (PAP) is fielding a significantly weaker team than in 2020, when it ran former labour chief Ng Chee Meng alongside two other political office-holders.
In contrast, the 2025 slate features three political newcomers and just one former junior minister — a move widely read as a quiet concession.
Furthermore, one of the newcomers was only inserted months before the election, after the previous branch chair quietly stepped down — reinforcing the sense of a party scrambling to fill the gap rather than preparing for a serious challenge.
This isn’t a fringe view. Reddit discussions from as early back as April 2024 show Singaporeans were already calling out this shift.
One Redditor put it plainly:
“It’s a sacrificial team. The goal is to hold the fort, not win.”
Another user added:
“The only reason they are contesting Sengkang is to keep the WP team locked there.”
Yet these clear-eyed observations — now echoed in coffee shop talk and social media — are absent from ST’s framing.
Instead, the article describes Sengkang as a “hotly contested” GRC where both sides are fighting hard, without interrogating why the PAP’s slate lacks political office-holders.
Even more troubling is how the piece handles municipal issues. ST focuses on individual complaints such as rats, ants, and a lost cat, while offering no context about the town council’s operational structure.
What it fails to mention is that the WP MPs have been directly managing Sengkang Town Council only because it was left with no choice.
After CPG Facilities Management and EM Services exited, no bidders came forward during a 2022 tender. WP was forced to take the entire operation in-house — a rare and challenging move, yet one the party has managed without major operational breakdowns.
Rather than acknowledging this, the article dwells on petty grievances, subtly suggesting poor governance — while failing to apply the same scrutiny to PAP-run wards, some of which have faced far more serious estate-level problems.
Contrast that with what actual residents are saying online:
“Honestly, for a town council that runs its own ops, they’ve been pretty efficient. No big dramas like in some other wards.”
“I’m not even a WP supporter by default, but credit where due — I’ve seen more engagement in Sengkang than where I used to live in a PAP ward.”
Yet, in the ST article, such praise is buried under a heavier dose of carefully selected complaints.
The effect is subtle but unmistakable: to leave readers with a lingering sense that the WP isn’t doing enough, while avoiding similar scrutiny of PAP-held constituencies that face far more serious estate-level problems.
While the article revives the Raeesah Khan incident — which remains politically consequential due to Pritam Singh’s ongoing legal case — it conspicuously ignores more recent, and arguably more serious, controversies involving PAP figures.
These include the Ridout Road affair, where public concern centred on the potential abuse of public office for personal benefit — concerns that ministers involved denied, but which have not been forgotten by voters.
The corruption charges against former minister S Iswaran mark the most serious criminal case ever brought against a Cabinet member in decades.
And the NRIC unmasking saga, involving the identification of a critic by government-linked agencies, was brushed off as a miscommunication — a response that fuelled deeper anxieties over privacy and institutional accountability.
These episodes continue to shape public trust, yet they are conspicuously absent from the article — reinforcing the sense that ST applies scrutiny selectively, and more heavily, to the opposition.
The article also glosses over the WP’s contributions in Parliament. The three Sengkang MPs — Jamus Lim, He Ting Ru, and Louis Chua — rank among Parliament’s most active backbenchers, raising substantive issues such as the rising cost of living, aircraft noise, and even the cultural re-introduction of Thaipusam as a public holiday.
In contrast, the PAP slate — comprising three new candidates and former Senior Minister of State Dr Lam Pin Min — has remained largely silent on national policy matters. Yet they continue to maintain public visibility through grassroots events, not as elected representatives, but as People’s Association (PA)-appointed advisers.
This includes handing out Edusave awards, attending community events, and approving improvements to the housing estates — activities from which the elected WP MPs are systematically excluded.
This creates a lopsided political battlefield — one where visibility is conferred by unelected appointments, and performance is obscured by selective reporting.
It’s a form of institutionalised pork barrel politics — and it is neither subtle nor new. Yet ST fails to acknowledge it, let alone interrogate it.
This omission further reveals how the article is structured to cast quiet doubt on WP’s legitimacy, while avoiding any scrutiny of the institutional mechanisms that advantage the PAP on the ground.
Instead, it devotes paragraphs to vending machine contracts — a trivial issue dressed up as legitimate scrutiny.
To be clear: no party should be above criticism. But criticism must be fair, proportional, and grounded in fact. This article is none of those things.
What ST has published is not an exercise in journalism — it’s a carefully engineered narrative that paints a false sense of contest, distracts from the ruling party’s weaknesses, and undermines legitimate opposition governance.
Most damningly, it ignores years of public sentiment, debate, and digital discourse — while cherry-picking quotes that fit its editorial agenda.
If Singapore’s mainstream media hopes to retain credibility, it must do more than manage optics. It must confront reality — and reflect the voices that live in it.
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