During the GE2020 political debate on July 1, 2020, one very prominent tussle took place between Vivian Balakrishnan from the People's Action Party (PAP) and the leader of Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) Chee Soon Juan.

Chee had challenged Vivian to state categorically whether the PAP wanted to raise the population to 10 million or not, something which Chee said Singaporeans are "deadly worried about".

To that, Vivian responded by saying the Prime Minister's Office has issued a statement earlier that same day "advising people like [Chee] not to indulge in falsehoods".

When Chee tried to interject and say that Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat "came up" with the idea, Vivian shot back, "That's a cheap shot, Dr Chee."

He said that Singapore won't even have 6.9 million, what more a population of 10 million.

"The government doesn't have a target for the population," he said. He repeated that Chee was raising "a false statement", and added, "We have said so, and we will say so again."

After the debate, Heng came out to clarify his position.

Heng also posted a video of his the dialogue at the NTU Students’ Union Ministerial Forum 2019 to prove he did not say Singapore should increase its population to 10 million.

In response to these clarifications, SDP put up a Facebook post saying it had extracted an assurance from PAP not to increase Singapore's population to 6.9 or 10 million.

PAP responds

PAP has now responded to that particular post in an article, "PAP Press Statement on SDP’s false population claims".

The statement took issue with Chee and SDP's response to the clarifications.

"Having been proven wrong, the honourable thing for Dr Chee to do would have been to admit that SDP’s election campaign was based on a falsehood, withdraw it, and apologise to Singaporeans for misleading them. But that would have been out of character.

Instead, Dr Chee further twists the facts. He now claims the SDP has “achieved victory” by extracting a promise from the PAP that it had no intention to increase the population to 10 million."

The article then laid out what they claim Chee had tried to do:

"Dr Chee first conjures a bogey out of thin air to befuddle, frighten and divide Singaporeans. When it is pointed out to him the bogey doesn’t exist, he claims someone else had “toyed” with the idea first.

And when it is shown conclusively that someone else had done no such thing, he waves his arms triumphantly in the air, proclaiming, “see, I slayed the bogey”."

The article then claimed that SDP's campaign was rendered pointless as one of their 4Y1N pillar, the N, was proven to be a falsehood.

You can read the full statement here.

Image from CNA/YouTube