SINGAPORE — Singaporeans expect their politicians to do more than devote so much time “to petty, partisan point-scoring”, said Workers’ Party Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Leon Perera today (Jan 31) in a Facebook post responding to Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam’s comments on the WP’s stand on the NCMP scheme.

The minister, said Mr Perera, has presented a “false choice” between either rejecting an NCMP seat or accepting it “with gratitude and praise”. 

“I decided to accept the NCMP position last year hoping that my contribution to the legislative process would outweigh the long-term risk to Singapore’s political evolution,” he said. “Only time will tell if I can indeed make a positive contribution to Parliament.”

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

During a community event today, Mr Shanmugam had called on the WP to be honest with its intentions over the NCMP scheme and said the party’s stance was “filled with contradictions”. 

His comments came after Government Whip Chan Chun Sing on Friday moved to amend WP’s motion on filling the NCMP seat vacated by Ms Lee Li Lian to call the opposition party’s move a “political manoeuvre”.

Mr Perera pointed out that when he spoke about healthcare and national education concerns during the parliamentary debate last week, he did not “decry” the respective office-holders as “ill-intentioned” or attacked them and their party. 

“We can agree to disagree without calling each other names, running each other down and scoring partisan points endlessly,” he said. 

Fellow WP member Daniel Goh, who is slated to fill the third NCMP seat, also weighed in today on Facebook, calling the amendment the “most ungracious thing” the People’s Action Party could have done to Ms Lee, who contributed “a lot to constructive politics” in the last two years. In an earlier post, he also explained her decision not to take up the post, saying the “principle of national service trumps the political principle of opposing the NCMP scheme”. 

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));