Last Updated on 2020-03-13 , 6:10 pm
In Singapore, there are over four million Facebook users in 2017: considering that there are only 5.6 million people in Singapore, four in five of your friends use Facebook.
I’m going to go out on a limb and presume that those non-Facebook users are babies, kids, the elderly and fake accounts.
With that massive number, it’s no surprise that politicians have Facebook accounts to keep in touch with the citizens. Our current Prime Minister has over 1.2 million Likes while the frontrunner to be our Prime Minister has 44K Likes.
But you’d realise something weird: one of the most popular opposition MPs, Low Thia Kiang, has no Facebook account.
Well, he might have one but that account is created a long time ago and the last post is in 2011, so it’s unknown whether that’s him.
And given that he’s one of the most well-known opposition MPs as well, you’d tend to wonder why.
Low Thia Kiang, The Ex-Chief of Workers’ Party
If you’re like XiaoBeach73 who thinks that Yusof Ishak is our president, then this might be new to you.
Low Thia Kiang, the 62-year-old politician who got into Parliament from 1991 to 2011 through Hougang SMC and from 2011 onwards though Aljunied GRC, had been the Workers’ Party secretary-general (i.e. the chief) from 2001.
What you might not know is that since 2018, he has given up that post, and Pritam Singh was elected to take over his place.
In other words, the legendary well-liked politician isn’t the chief of the main opposition party now.
But still that doesn’t answer the question: why doesn’t he have a Facebook account?
I mean, he does look like the friendly uncle who’d post daily Good Morning post in Facebook…
Daniel Goh, WP Media Team Chair, Explained
In May 2019, The Straits Times conducted an interview with two WP’s Central Executive Committee members.
They’re Daniel Goh, who is also the Organising Secretary and the Media Team Chair, and Leon Perera, who’s the President of WP’s Youth Wing and the Deputy Chair of the Media Team.
Both are also Non-constituency Members of Parliament (meaning they lost the election but for the best results, so they can still be in Parliament).
The journalist started with the usual question of how the politicians consume their news lah, the online platforms they used lah and whatnot.
Then came the question everyone’s asking: Why is Low Thia Kiang, their ex-leader, not on Facebook?
Reason is Rather Noble
According to Goh, they had tried hard to convince Low to join Facebook, and despite his progressive views, he’s not keen to do so because he’s “old school” and that Facebook is for the young people.
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But here’s the interesting part.
In Goh’s words, he believes that Low “doesn’t want to turn Workers’ Party into Low Thia Kiang’s party,” and so he withdraws “quite deliberately”.
And just so you know, the other long-term politician, Sylvia Lim, has a Facebook account but she’s extremely inactive.
You can watch the entire interview here (question about Low Thia Kiang’s non-existent Facebook account starts from 5:12):
Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:
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