9 July 2011: IPS Post-Election Forum Speech on Party Renewal

I attended a very thought-provoking conference at the invitation of the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy last Friday where I was asked to speak on party renewal. I have appended my speech in full below. I spoke on the subject of party renewal alongside Hazel Poa of the National Solidarity Party and Vikram Nair of the PAP. Many subjects were covered during the question and answer session including my response to a question from Dean Kishore Mahbubani of the LKY School who used the co-driver analogy to enquire when the Workers’ Party would be ready to form government. I suggested to him that the reality of any party forming government is only one possibility and that a coalition government of a number of parties could also be possible, in the event no party secured an outright majority of more than 44 seats.

Tessa Wong of the Straits Times called me up on Saturday morning oddly asking if the Worker’s Party aimed to be a part of a coalition government to which I answered in the negative. She filed her story on Saturday night, with the headline, “WP’s Pritam Singh clarifies coalition suggestion” (see screenshot timestamped at 10.07pm on Saturday). Between the time Tessa filed her story and before the next day’s paper went to print, someone in the Straits Times had changed the headline to “Pritam retracts coalition suggestion”. Tessa did not call me up again after she filed her story, so I am not sure how the Straits Times concluded that I had retracted the coalition suggestion. And for the record, nothing has been retracted.

Read the rest of MP-elect Pritam Singh’s article HERE.