Workers’ Party introduced its third batch of candidates at its headquarters on Friday afternoon.
They are corporate lawyer He Ting Ru, 32; property agent Ron Tan, 30; polytechnic lecturer L. Somasundaram, 52; and businessman Adrian Sim, 43.
Ms He is a graduate from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and is a qualified solicitor in England and Wales. After working as legal counsel in a financial institution specialising in structured and derivative financing, she has been Head of Legal of a listed company since 2013.
Ms He has been volunteering at Chen Show Mao’s Meet-the-People Sessions since May 2011 and been involved in both constituency and party level work. She is currently the Secretary of the Workers’ Party Youth Wing, and oversees the Youth Wing’s outreach efforts in the areas of Service, Education and Heritage.
During the press conference, Ms He said many young people are concerned about the costs of housing and raising children, as well as caring for their parents and grandparents. “They are also concerned about the Singaporean core being diluted… Some young Singaporeans no longer dream of a better life for themselves or their children.”
Mr Somasundaram joined WP after the 2006 election, and was elected to the party’s central executive committee in 2014. He stood in the 2011 election at Moulmein-Kallang GRC, before the deletion of the GRC after the electoral boundary shifts announced by the Electoral Boundary Review Committee.
Soma, as he is known amongst colleagues and friends, went to Kay Siang Primary School and then to Victoria School. Working as a failure analysis engineer in the 1990s at Seagate Technology, he often traveled to the United States on assignment. He enjoyed working in the United States. However, when asked if he wished to be transferred to the United States permanently, Soma gave serious consideration to the offer but turned it down as he felt that Singapore was his home. He is currently an engineering lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic, where he has been working for 19 years since 1996.
“I was inspired by the credible candidates WP had put up,” he said, adding that he would speak up on immigration issues for PMETs.
Mr Somasundaram is currently the Deputy Treasurer for the party.
Mr Sim was a WP volunteer for two years before becoming a member. Mr Sim, who comes from a humble background and had to sell newspapers to help with the family’s income, said: “Because I’ve been through this, I understand the struggles.”
Mr Sim’s father was a bus conductor with what was then SBS bus company, and his mother was a housewife. He started working part-time at the age of 15 to supplement the family’s household expenses. His mother passed away in 1996, and he has been a pillar of support for the family as his father suffered from a stroke even before his mother’s death.
Mr Tan said that he started volunteering with the Workers’ Party’s Hougang Constituency Committee in 2012 after being introduced by his fiancée to the party. He is currently serving as an Executive Committee member of the Workers’ Party Youth Wing, and is also a member of the Workers’ Party’s Grassroots Committee (WPGC) and the Hougang Constituency Committee (HGCC).
