The Workers’ Party (WP) chief and Leader of the Opposition (LO) Pritam Singh took to his Facebook on Monday (14 Dec) to pay tribute to all polling agents who played a part in helping the party during the recent General Election.
In his post, Mr Singh particularly highlighted one Mdm Leong, who turns “71 years young in a couple of days”. She came to his Meet-the-People (MPS) session on Monday evening to share some of her observations in the course of volunteering for WP as a polling agent in East Coast GRC.
“Polling agents are appointed by the election agents of candidates. Their duty is to ensure that an election is carried out in accordance to the law. As a small party, we rely a lot on volunteers like Mdm Leong,” he wrote.
According to Mr Singh, polling agents also help to “demystify the political process and the voting secrecy”.
“Any Singaporean can be a polling agent as long as he/she is a Singaporean, not a primary or secondary school student, not an undischarged bankrupt, and has not had an order of supervision made against him/her under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act,” he added.
To that end, Mr Singh noted that more senior citizens ought to follow Mdm Leong’s footsteps by signing up as polling agents in the future.
“But even as we welcome Phase 3 at the end of the month as announced by the Prime Minister earlier today, COVID-19 has not allowed the Party to hold our usual thank you lunch for volunteers,” he continued.
Despite this being a “matter of some regret for the party”, Mr Singh acknowledged that public health considerations are “far more important in the circumstances”.
He concluded his post thanking Mdm Leong and every other polling agent who had helped the party during GE2020.
