The Workers’ Party (WP)’s organising secretary Dennis Tan expressed his gratitude to residents of Fengshan single-member constituency (SMC) who have helped him enter Parliament as a non-constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) in the last general election in 2015.
In a Facebook post early Friday morning (26 June), Mr Tan said that in the five years he has tried to “ask as many Parliamentary Questions and to speak on many bills, motions, debates”, a “fair bit” of the feedback he received came from Fengshan residents, who had met him in person or communicated with him electronically through WhatsApp and email.
“I am particularly grateful to have come to know many residents over time, through house visits, walking around the estate, buying meat or vegetables at the Blk 85 market, having kopi or meals at the hawker centre or coffeeshops and through our food distribution.
“It is particularly gratifying to see over time the number of resident volunteers turning up to help in the food distribution or the porridge distribution during Ramadan,” said Mr Tan.
While Mr Tan garnered 42.5 per cent of the votes in Fengshan SMC in 2015 against the People Action Party’s Cheryl Chan, he managed to secure a seat in Parliament as an NCMP, as he was one of the best-performing candidates who did not win in that election.
Mr Tan is now poised to succeed two-term MP Png Eng Huat as a candidate in the Hougang SMC in the upcoming GE, after Party secretary-general Pritam Singh announced yesterday that Mr Png will not stand for election this year.
Mr Png is one of three WP senior members who have decided to step down from the party’s leadership, other than former secretary-general Low Thia Khiang and central executive committee member Chen Show Mao, said Mr Singh at the end of a virtual press conference on Thursday (25 June).
TOC understands that Mr Tan is not an unfamiliar face in Hougang, as he has been seen walking the ground with Mr Png and has been helping out the latter in the Meet-the-People sessions since last year.
