By Asia Samachar Team | SINGAPORE |
Singapore’s out-going ruling party did not field any new Indian candidates as its prepared for General Elections 2020. Why?
On the weekend, the question was posed to a People’s Action Party (PAP) senior Indian leader and lawmaker with more than three decades of experience. During a walkabout in Yishun on July 4, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam took on the question.
He said that none of the nine Indian candidates, of whom some are ministers, will be retiring this year as the party approached GE2020, reported Singapore media portal Mothership.
Responding to a media query in Tamil, Shanmugam felt that Indians are well-represented in Parliament and explained that Indian representatives makes up about 10% of the Parliament. In comparison, he mentioned that Indians only make up about 7.5% of the national population, the portal reported.
Covering the same event, The Straits Times reported Shanmugam as saying that though the first goal of the PAP is meritocracy, representing each race in Parliament according to the make-up of the country is also important.
“The first goal of the PAP is meritocracy. Race, colour or religion aside, it’s meritocracy. But at the same time, Parliament has to proportionally represent the people. Chinese, Indians and Malays are represented, but if the percentage changes too much, people will look at that,” the newspaper quoted him.
Shanmugam is a long-serving minister. The former lawyer was first elected to Parliament in 1988.
He has been the Minister for Law since May 2008 and the Minister for Home Affairs since October 2015, a post which he had briefly served from November 2010 to May 2011. He previously served as the Minister for Foreign Affairs from May 2011 to September 2015.
The other Indian ministers in the recent Cabinet were Tharman Shanmugaratnam
(senior minister and coordinating minister for social policies), Indranee Rajah (second minister for education and finance), Vivian Balakrishnan (foreign affairs), S Iswaran (communications and information) and Janil Puthucheary (senior minister of state).
The present list of PAP candidates also does not include any candidates from the Sikh community. At one time, the Singapore parliament had two MPs from the Sikh community – Davinder Singh and Inderjit Singh.
Davinder Singh holds the distinction of being the first Sikh parliamentarian in Singapore’s post-independence history and served the Bishan-Toa Payoh Group Representation constituency from 1988 to 2006. Inderjit served four terms in Parliament before stepping down in 2015.
On the opposition front, two candidates from the Sikh community in the running are Workers’ Party (WP) secretary-general Pritam Singh and Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA) chief media officer Harmindar Pal Singh. Pritam had won in 2011 and 2015 elections.
In 2015, there were four Sikh candidates from the opposition parties. Joining Pritam and Harminder Pal then were Gurmit Singh from the WP and Sukdeu Singh from Singaporeans First (SingFirst).
In the 2011 general elections, the three Sikhs candidates were veteran lawmaker Inderjit Singh from the PAP, Pritam and Harminder Pal.
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