Roy Ngerng or M Ravi: Strategic reasons why only one of them will contest Ang Mo Kio GRC with Reform Party

Or might they be fielded together?

Jeanette Tan| August 12, 11:27 AM

Last time we saw them in the news together, there was tension between them, in the wake of the human rights lawyer discharging himself from the blogger's defamation suit brought by PM Lee.

Judging from his posts on Facebook lately, though, it seems they may have sorted things out:

Could they be fielded together? We're not sure, although Ravi did say before he may not want Ngerng on his team.

We asked Jeyaretnam directly if he has updates or has confirmed any of the members of his Ang Mo Kio team yet, and he's responded that he is "not at the stage of making any announcement to the press".

Later on Tuesday, however, he posted this update:

It ended with a few paragraphs that appear to suggest his party's preference that M Ravi sticks to legal work:

And we would have let this matter rest, until we saw that he edited his post to remove the above paragraphs to simply say:

So the door's still open, and there still is a possibility that he may join the party.

Meanwhile, let's help the RP chief strategise the better of these two options, if they are still an either-or:

Roy Ngerng

Reasons to field him in AMK:

1. He's passionate (so passionate about speaking up that he's going to have to pay some serious money for defaming PM Lee in that blog post about the CPF).

2. He has home ground advantage (doesn't live here but dad's carrot cake stall is located on Ang Mo Kio Avenue 4 — although oh wait, that's now in Nee Soon GRC whoops).

3. He has a big Facebook fan base (so big that people donated a hefty $110,000 to him without even worrying about what he was going to do with it — this should also mean he will have no difficulty crowd-sourcing his own election deposit).

4. He can reach people online via his blog, "The Heart Truths" (where he said he received 2 million hits for the 400 entries he posted to it. Ditto for number 3).

5. He might be able to relate to residents better (than your run-of-the-mill overqualified PAP elite types).

M Ravi

Reasons to field him in AMK:

1. As a practicing lawyer, he may be better-placed to question or argue for or against various issues related to law.

2. He fulfills the minority candidate quota for the six-man GRC team.

3. He's an almost-award-winning author.

4. His past work with various high-profile human rights cases puts him in good standing with Singaporeans (like with Yong Vui Kong, Alan Shadrake and Tan Eng Hong).

5. Number 4 also proves his passion in bettering the cause of Singaporeans.

Considering the above, though, they all lend favourably to M Ravi standing in West Coast GRC as well — or possibly even to Radin Mas SMC. In that case, if KJ transfers himself to stand in Ang Mo Kio, the requirement for a valuable minority candidate will be fulfilled for both GRCs the RP is eyeing.

Righto, KJ; now we've done the thinking, it's over to you.

Weigh your priorities carefully, please.

*Editor's note - The author is a resident of Ang Mo Kio GRC.

Related articles:

Has lawyer M Ravi had enough of his client CPF blogger Roy Ngerng’s antics?

Lawyer M Ravi says Roy Ngerng is “too impulsive” to be on his GE team

CPF blogger’s lawyer M Ravi distances himself from potentially libellous online article put out by his client and friends

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