Following Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's Cabinet reshuffle last week, the Workers' Party (WP) also conducted their own mini reshuffle tonight (Oct. 6).
Three WP candidates for GE 2015 -- Mohamaed Fairoz Shariff, Kenneth Foo, and Leon Perera -- were inducted into the WP Central Executive Committee, WP's highest decision-making body.
According to WP's press release, the decision was made at the monthly meeting of the CEC, "pursant to Article 19" of its constitution.
This was what the three new WP CEC members told Mothership.sg:
Fairoz: "Honoured to be part of the team. With this appointment, I hope to set the stage for more rigorous and constructive debate, especially dialogues promoting racial and religious harmony".
Foo: "尽其力,行其事"
Perera: "The challenges the Workers' Party faces at this critical juncture are substantial. I look forward to working hard with my team mates to overcome them, to meet the expectations Singaporeans have of us and to help build a better country brick by brick".
Anyway, here are three things about the WP reshuffle it'll be okay not knowing until 2020:
1. The three co-opted CEC members are destined for bigger things in the party.
What is the one thing the three co-opted members have in common?
All three of them were part of the Group of Six -- the others being ex NCMP Gerald Giam, Daniel Goh and He Ting Ru -- who launched WP's manifesto ahead of the 2015 General Election on Saturday Aug. 29 at the party headquarters.
Two of the three co-opted members -- Fairoz and Perera -- were members of the East Coast GRC team, while Foo was the leader of the Nee Soon GRC team.
This means that the WP CEC will now have 17 members:
Chairman: Sylvia Lim Swee Lian, 50 (Aljunied GRC MP-Elect)
Secretary-General: Low Thia Khiang, 59 (Aljunied GRC MP-Elect)
CEC members:
Chen Show Mao, 54 (Aljunied GRC MP-Elect)
Muhamad Faisal bin Abdul Manap, 40 (Aljunied GRC MP-Elect)
Gerald Giam Yean Song, 37
Daniel Goh Pei Siong, 42
Lee Li Lian, 37
Png Eng Huat, 53 (Hougang SMC MP-Elect)
Mohammed Rahizan bin Yaacob, 59 (Was not a 2015 GE candidate)
Pritam Singh, 39 (Aljunied GRC MP-Elect)
L Somasundaram, 52
Dennis Tan Lip Fong, 45 (Non-Constituency MP-Elect)
John Yam Poh Nam, 53 (Was not a 2015 GE candidate)
Yee Jenn Jong, 50
Mohamed Fairoz Shaiff, 36
Foo Seck Guan, Kenneth, 38
Leon Perera, 45 (Non-Constituency MP-Elect)
2. The WP media team is strengthened tremendously, with the inclusion of key WP members.
Social media was the "homeground" of ruling People's Action Party (PAP) in GE2015, with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Ministers Tan Chuan-Jin and K Shanmugam among the most popular politicians on Facebook.
WP has pulled up their socks by appointing East Coast GRC candidate Daniel Goh as the Chair of the Media team, with former Media Team Chair Gerald Giam assisting Goh as the Vice-Chair.
Goh was one of the few WP candidates who understood the spirit of the social media space. A day after GE, Goh was able to capture the zeitgeist of the sentiments of WP supporters.
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Posted by Daniel Goh 吴佩松 on Friday, September 11, 2015
And who can forget the Instagram star of 2015? #ThetasteofFengshan #heavenly
WP Chairwoman and Aljunied GRC MP Sylvia Lim and NCMP-elect Leon Perera have been appointed as members of the Media team.
3. WP needs more female representation
Among the 17 CEC members, only two -- Lim and former MP Lee Li Lian -- are women.
In other words, female representation (11.8%) in WP top leadership is slightly worse than the ruling PAP, which has six female leaders out of 37 political office-holders.
How about giving Marine Parade GRC candidate He Ting Ru a chance in the next CEC election?
In fact, Ru was the most popular new WP candidate on FB, ahead of the newly appointed Media Chair.
Top photo by Christopher Wong.
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