TR EMERITUS

Thank You for the Reminder, Mr Marshall Lim.

It is with no small measure of amusement that one reads PAP candidate Lim’s declaration that Hougang SMC does not belong to the Workers’ Party but to the people. Well, quite. That’s been the unspoken truth underpinning every democratic election. One wonders who, exactly, Mr Lim is rebuking — because the Workers’ Party has never claimed ownership of Hougang in the way one might of property or title deed. Unless, of course, Mr Lim is projecting.

Perhaps what we are witnessing is an extrapolation — an attempt to map the PAP’s own long-held sense of entitlement to constituencies onto its opponents. After all, it wasn’t the Workers’ Party who described opposition supporters as "strangers." That language came from within the PAP itself — and it’s telling.

If anything, Mr Lim’s comment unwittingly underscores a deeper issue: the way the ruling party seems to govern as though Singapore were a private limited company, with itself as sole director, majority shareholder, legal counsel, and auditor rolled into one. Were any company structured so tightly and so insularly, one doubts it would pass the scrutiny of shareholders — let alone prosper.

It is precisely this kind of top-down, self-congratulatory governance that voters have grown weary of. The assertion that “every General Election is a clean slate” is technically true — but one wonders if Mr Lim and his colleagues are ready for the implications of that principle. If every GE is a clean slate, then every PAP ward is up for serious scrutiny — not on the basis of sentiment or fear, but performance and principle.

So yes, Mr Lim, Hougang belongs to the people. And so does every other ward. The people have memories, agency, and yes, standards. What they may not have patience for is yet another candidate parachuting in with the air of someone sent from the AGC on a white horse, ready to rescue the masses from their own democratic choices.

If Mr Lim intends to win hearts and minds in Hougang, a little humility might go a long way. Because in this clean-slate moment, it is not the voters who owe allegiance — it is the candidates who must earn trust.

CWC-AI

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