Daily Lessons from Life 09 January 2013 - By-election: WP will contest, but keeps mum on candidate

"By-election: WP will contest, but keeps mum on candidate - Singapolitics 09 January 2013

The Workers' Party has confirmed that it will contest the Punggol East by-election but will unveil its candidate at a later date, said WP secretary-general Low Thia Khiang on Wednesday night.

The party is ready for the campaign and has even prepared its logistics, he said.

He declined to comment on a possible multi-cornered fight but said that as far as he knows, there are no pow-wow sessions among the opposition parties scheduled yet."

The WAIT is OVER!! There will be a by-election for Punggol East Single Member Constituency (SMC) on 26 January 2013!!

A surprise though in terms of the timing given that there is a lot of not so favourable press for PAP on the recent spat between a PAP-owned company, AIM, and the Workers' Party (WP) AHTC, on the tender (single bidder eventually) sales of the public-funded Town Council Management System (TCMS), and the many pressing national issues the government supposedly wanted to deal with first.

Lessons for me are:

1. another unwelcome distraction for the ruling party as there are a lot of pressing national issues to take care of. The many thorny issues that irked the last general election voters are still lingering around. For some, the issues may actually have worsened;

2. it will be a test of how the opposition parties, and PAP, will be strategising to win this SMC. It will not be easy for the incumbent as there are a lot of unhappiness still with how things are turning out at the AIM-AHTC saga. Of course, if the constituents are SOLELY interested in the bread-and-butter issues, there is not too much disadvantage here by PAP. After all, it has all the resources at its disposal to deal with them. e.g. restart the oft-stalled Supermarket/Malls project?;

3. will WP make another breakthrough in this by-election? If it did, how will it affects the next general election in 2016? Will this be the watershed turning point for Singapore politics? If so, how would the outsiders, investors especially, see Singapore?

A privilege to be able to witness this by-election. Thanks to an unfortunate incident of the heart.

A new dawn or back to 'business as usual'? Let's wait and see ...