Leader of the Opposition: WP Not Forming a Shadow Cabinet But Will Scrutinise Policies in 5 Key Areas

When it was announced that Workers’ Party’s Pritam Singh would be officially designated as the Leader of the Opposition and be given resources to carry out his duties, people started to talk about this:

Yes, a Shadow Cabinet.

After all, this is what the Leader of the Opposition in other countries does.

For example, the Leader can appoint Nicole Seah as the Shadow Education Minister. Ms Seah won’t be paid extra, nor would she be following Education Minister Ong Ye Kung whenever he goes. Instead, Ms Seah would be following Mr Ong’s policies very closely.

If Mr Ong decided to remove O-Level and A-Level completely, and let students go to universities based on their IPPT results, Ms Seah should think whether the opposition agrees or disagrees. If she disagrees, the opposition should come out with an alternate policy or solution: how about using NAPFA results instead of IPPT results instead?

Well, today, the Leader of the Opposition for Singapore has spoken, and it seems like there’s no shadow after all.

Leader of the Opposition: WP Not Forming a Shadow Cabinet But Will Scrutinise Policies in 5 Key Areas

Today, Mr Singh went up to Parliament to make his first speech as the Leader of the Opposition (LO), speaking for more than half an hour.

For a start, he mentioned that he won’t be forming any Shadow Cabinet because the Workers’ Party does not have enough MPs in Parliament.

It should be noted that in other countries, there are usually more seats held by the opposition party for them to be Shadow Ministers, though there’s no mention of whether one needs to have a seat in Parliament to be a Shadow Minister (though it’ll help since he or she can debate about the policy in Parliament).

WP currently has 10 MPs. Singapore, excluding the Prime Minister’s Office, has 15 ministries.

Instead, WP will organise itself to look at policies in five areas that are important to Singaporeans. They are:

• Health, aging and retirement adequacy
• Jobs, businesses and the economy
• Education, inequality and the cost of living
• Housing, transport and infrastructure
• National sustainability

In other words, it’s like WP combining a few ministries into one area to look at, instead of scrutinising every ministry with a shadow minister.

He said, “My personal expectation is that my Workers Party colleagues and I will have to work extra hard. We will have to ask ourselves tough questions before critiquing government policy. The chief of which is, what would we do if we were in charge.”

He added that even with more opposition MPs, they still “fall short” of the resources that the Government has, so Singaporeans should take note of this when forming expectations of the opposition.

In other words, if the Government decides to lengthen NS to 5 years, don’t expect the opposition to come in and reverse it with debates or whatnot lah.

Why had he said that all of a sudden?

Because based on what he assessed, Singaporeans appear to expect the opposition to play a big and constructive role in Singapore politics, but that might not be the case here.

He said, “We intend to make targeted inquiries of government departments and public agencies as such information is essential for crafting alternative policies. On its part, the Government should consider how it can put out more information without being asked to, particularly information and indicators benchmarked against other countries.”

Addressed Issue About Foreign Manpower, Too

What’s the topic that everyone’s talking about nowadays?

Dee Kosh.

And since Mr Singh most probably didn’t want to know more about Dee Kosh, he spoke about another issue that everyone’s talking about: foreign manpower.

One of the reasons why WP has won the support of Singaporeans is that they don’t go the populist route, and his speech about foreign manpower shows just that as he didn’t just oppose to foreign workers, but merely say that Singapore would need to change how to manage them well.

He said, “Their presence gives Singapore a vitality that keeps us economically relevant and also provides jobs and opportunities to our fellow Singaporeans. Many of us count the foreigners in our midst, regardless of race, language or religion as our friends.

“That openness and friendly attitude must continue as a manifestation of the Singapore spirit and the Singapore we leave behind for future generations of Singaporeans. But it is precisely because we need foreigners to help power our economy that we need to pay more attention to the Singapore worker … some of whom feel excluded from opportunities created in their homeland.”

PAP MP and Union Chief Patrick Tay had earlier suggested publishing the names of companies that have discriminatory practices, which Mr Singh agreed, too.

In addition, he suggested a Parliamentary Select Committee can investigate the limitations of the workforce.

Now, let’s wait and see how the debate between Pritam Singh and Josephine Teo pans out—if there’s one, that is.

You can also read more about Pritam Singh here.