The Workers' Party (WP)'s decisiveness is a breath of fresh air to Singaporeans.

We have heard about WP's very conspicuous absence at the second round of horse-trading talks at the National Solidarity Party (NSP)'s headquarters on Thursday night.

Hence, their actions on Friday early morning are clear statements of intent to their NSP rivals - enough of the hand-wringing and talk, we will wake up early this morning to walk the ground at MacPherson — one of the two constituencies they and the NSP are "fighting" over:

They also bumped into new mum Tin Pei Ling's grassroots activists, who are wasting no time in helping to work the ground during Tin's month of confinement.

The large group of roughly 20 folks includes MacPherson PAP branch secretary Rosemary Lim:

So okay, we'll explain why we had to set the scene in a bit. Here's what WP chairman Sylvia Lim said when she addressed the press:

Good morning everyone. I think some people may want to know why we did not attend the opposition party meeting yesterday. Just to recap, we had earlier assessed that the likely three-corner fights the WP would be involved in would be Fengshan, MacPherson SMC and Marine Parade GRC. Now as far as Fengshan is concerned, we would like to thank the DPP for making way for the WP to contest there in a straight fight against the ruling party.

As for MacPherson and Marine Parade, as I've said earlier, we had actually initiated a meeting with the NSP, who had indicated their intention to contest there, and in fact we met them before the first opposition meeting on the 3rd of August. During that meeting we actually conveyed a concrete proposal to avoid 3-corner fight in Marine Parade as well as in MacPherson. Subsequently we noted that at the meeting itself, the first meeting on the 3rd of August, the NSP had indicated disagreement, so we felt on assessment that it would not be productive to attend the subsequent meeting that was held on Thursday so time is of the essence to us, so we will have to proceed.

In case that's tl;dr, here's the breakdown of what happened, from what Lim shared with Mothership.sg on Friday morning:

1. WP went to NSP before the opposition parties meeting to table a suggested compromise: WP will contest in Marine Parade GRC, while NSP contests in MacPherson SMC.

2. There was no response from the NSP until the August 3 opposition meeting, where the party rejected the proposal outright.

3. There was since no communication between the two parties about this, so WP has moved to forge ahead with contesting both constituencies.

4. WP felt it would not be productive to attend the subsequent meeting last night. WP indicated that "time is of the essence", so they showed their urgency by walking the ground today. 

Other observations

We found it fascinating that on the very next day after the night of the opposition meeting, WP should address the media with the very ground they had initially offered up to the NSP, beneath their feet.

We also noticed that WP prefers to subtly introduce a familiar face to the public during each media doorstop:

It was NCMP Yee Jenn Jong today.