Singapore Democrats
“It seems like we can’t even find locals for elections these days,” the man said in Chinese, in a surprisingly loud voice. Was he taking a swipe at the PAP for fielding candidates who were not born and bred in Singapore?
His eating buddies sitting around the table seemed to nod in agreement. For good measure, the gentleman repeated his statement a few times just in case those around didn’t hear him the first time.
His comments came as we were greeting residents at the food centre at the Yuhua constituency over the weekend.
The Singapore Democrats have repeatedly received feedback that that overcrowding in Singapore due to the immigration policy to allow foreign workers into this country in the millions has caused much unhappiness.
Potential candidates and party activists have been pounding the ground in the various wards that we will be contesting in. We were at the single-seat ward twice last week to knock on doors as well.
Our preparations for the eventual contest at Yuhua is running along smoothly given the late start that we made compared to the Bukit Panjang SMC and Holland-Bukit Timah GRC. Yuhua was only recently announced as a single-seat only when the new election boundaries were announced in February this year.
Since then, however, we have made good progress including collecting enough signatures from residents to nominate our candidate.
And while the group was going from table to table to greet the follks, a few members broke off to visit one resident whom we found out was under great financial distress. We brought along groceries and a mdeical doctor to tend to the family’s teenage children (see report here).
Of course, no outing would be complete without our visiting familiar spots like the Fajar market at Bukit Panjang and the Bukit Timah Food Centre.
At Bukit Panjang, one resident asked Dr Chee Soon Juan to take a photograph with his toddler son. The SDP secretary-general was only to happy to oblige. It is moments like these that make walkabouts a pleasure to do.
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