GE2025: WP Tampines team says it has experience handling residents' needs, town council if elected
The WP's Tampines Changkat candidate Kenneth Foo (third from left) and Tampines GRC candidates (from left) Michael Thng, Jimmy Tan, Faisal Manap, Eileen Chong and Ong Lue Ping. ST PHOTO: ARIFFIN JAMAR
GE2025: WP Tampines team says it has experience handling residents' needs, town council if elected
Follow our live coverage here.
SINGAPORE - The opposition WP team in Tampines will work to ensure that ongoing projects in the town will carry on, should it be voted into Parliament, the party's vice-chair Faisal Manap said on April 30.
The party's Tampines candidates also sought to assure voters on the penultimate day of the election campaign that they will draw on their experiences to take care of residents' needs and town council matters.
Mr Faisal, who moved out of Aljunied GRC to lead WP's Tampines GRC team, said he will draw on his 14 years of experience as an MP, and his team will work hard with government agencies to ensure that ongoing projects will continue.
He was speaking to the media outside the Tampines 1 shopping centre in Tampines Central , flanked by the party's candidates contesting Tampines GRC and Tampines Changkat SMC.
Community activities will also remain, said Mr Faisal, who oversaw the Kaki Bukit ward of Aljunied GRC , and he hopes to take a more communal approach to planning them .
Mr Kenneth Foo, WP's candidate in Tampines Changkat, said the team will also consider the progress of the town's projects, and if some are falling behind, it will work to resolve the problems that arise.
'We will also continue talking to residents, and understand their situation and wishes, and see which areas we can continue to advance,' he added in Mandarin.
Mr Faisal added that each of his team members has unique strengths.
For example, Tampines GRC candidate and technology start-up co-founder Michael Thng was a former consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, is a seasoned negotiator, and can use his skills to ensure that residents in Tampines are well taken care of, said Mr Faisal.
At the interview on April 30, Mr Faisal was also asked for his thoughts on Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong's walkabout in Tampines with the PAP team on April 29, as well as Prime Minister Lawrence Wong's visit to the town on April 30.
Mr Faisal said the team was 'humbled' by their presence.
'It shows that our presence does bring some form of competition. That is what we want,' he said.
Mr Faisal borrowed an analogy from former WP chief Low Thia Khiang. In 2011, Mr Low said WP's role in Parliament was akin to being the co-driver of a bus driven by the ruling PAP and slapping the driver if he goes off-course, falls asleep or drives dangerously.
Mr Faisal said that was the purpose WP was contesting in Tampines .
'We want to give competition to the incumbent, so that they will do better and perform better.'
WP Tampines GRC candidate and former diplomat Eileen Chong added that the team believes competition will bring improvements.
'We welcome Senior Minister Lee and Prime Minister Wong coming to Tampines (to support their party's candidates). We also had our secretary-general Pritam Singh and former secretary-general Low Thia Khiang come to show us support,' she said in Mandarin.
With the campaign entering its last stretch, Dr Ong Lue Ping , a Tampines GRC candidate for WP, said that although the team was tired, they felt very encouraged by Tampines residents.
The senior principal clinical psychologist at the Institute of Mental Health added: 'Because of their warmth and their enthusiasm for us, I think that gives us additional energy, and we really look forward to serving them if we do have the opportunity.'
Mr Faisal was later asked to respond to comments made by Social and Family Development Minister Masagos Zulkifli, who leads the PAP's Tampines GRC team, the day before.
Mr Masagos, the Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs, had said several residents whom he met during house visits were worried about the mixing of race and religion with politics.
In response, Mr Faisal said he had pledged in front of attendees at WP's rally on April 26 that he will serve everyone 'fairly and equally, regardless of race, language and religion'.
His comments came after the authorities directed social media giant Meta to block access to posts by foreigners attempting to interfere in the May 3 General Election.
Government leaders have denounced the posts, which called on voters to select candidates along racial and religious lines.
Mr Faisal was also asked about the four-corner ed contest in Tampines GRC. Apart from WP and the PAP, the National Solidarity Party and People's Power Party are also gunning for the constituency.
He said the party's focus is on what it can do for Tampines.
'Every party has the right to come in and contest... the focus right now is on what we can do for the community and for the voters.'
Join ST's WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Times
2 hours ago
- Business Times
Chinese managers take reins at TikTok Shop in US as sales miss goal
[SEATTLE] ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has been replacing US-hired staff near Seattle with managers connected to China, aiming to replicate its e-commerce success in Asia after sales fell short in America. TikTok Shop initially set a goal to increase its US e-commerce business tenfold last year to US$17.5 billion in transaction volume, but had to drastically lower that objective, according to people familiar with the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk publicly. TikTok established its Shop business in the Seattle area near the online retail giant it was aiming to displace. Meetings that used to be held in English are now often conducted in Mandarin and managers increasingly write in Chinese when communicating on Feishu, ByteDance's internal Slack-like app, with English-speaking staff forced to rely on the built-in translation function. 'We continually assess our business needs and have made recent team adjustments to strengthen our organisation, remaining confident in the future ahead,' a TikTok Shop spokesperson said. The company previously called the reported e-commerce transaction target 'inaccurate.' More than 100 TikTok Shop employees in the US have been fired or have left amid confusion between leaders that has worsened the work environment, according to people familiar with the company. The cultural transition taking place in the firm coincides with its fight for survival in the US – due mainly to the app's Chinese ties. A national security law passed by Congress last year requires TikTok's US business to be spun off from its Chinese parent company or it will face a ban. Lawmakers warned that TikTok's ties to China pose a threat to the safety and security of American users. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up President Donald Trump has twice delayed the ban – with legal assurances from his attorney general – and another deadline for divestiture looms later this month, though that might also be extended, the Wall Street Journal reported. ByteDance said during the Biden administration that it had no plan to sell TikTok, but in April the Beijing-based company confirmed that it had been in discussions with the Trump government regarding a potential solution for TikTok US. It said any agreement would be subject to approval under Chinese law. The TikTok Shop near Seattle in February began requiring workers to be in the office five days a week for eight hours a day, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg. The change is in contrast to some other major tech companies that still offer flexible work schedules, and has been particularly burdensome for employees who often join late-night calls with colleagues in Asia after they leave the office, according to former employees. US-based staff require human resources and manager pre-approval to work from home. The changes were introduced after Bob Kang, China-based global head of TikTok's e-commerce division, visited the office in Bellevue, Washington, earlier this year and found there weren't enough staff present on a work day, according to multiple people who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Assigning Chinese executives to run TikTok's fastest-growing business may raise questions about its previous corporate promise to distance the US operation from China. After Trump initially tried to ban the app during his first term, the company announced a security plan dubbed 'Project Texas' and vowed to wall off the app's US data and operations from any Chinese oversight. TikTok Shop is the biggest source of revenue for the video-sharing app besides advertising, and it has become a major investment area for ByteDance. Adding full-scale commerce to its eye-catching content and popular influencers sets it apart from rivals like Instagram and YouTube. The company still aims to challenge Amazon in major markets. Recruited aggressively To better compete, TikTok Shop recruited aggressively near Seattle over the past three years, targeting people with experience at Amazon, according to a review of Linkedin profiles and people who worked at both companies. In some corners of TikTok's Bellevue office of about 1,000 employees, the workflow felt like a remix of previous Amazon teams, the people said. But since January, growing tension in the teams below Kang and Nico Le Bourgeois, who oversaw TikTok's e-commerce operations in the US, became a distraction for staff who were often unsure about whose orders to follow, the people said. TikTok's uncertain fate in the US also weighed on morale. The company carried out a round of layoffs in April. A second batch followed in May. In the first round, Le Bourgeois was demoted when Mu Qing, a Chinese executive from ByteDance's e-commerce platform Douyin moved to the Seattle area to run TikTok Shop in the US. After the second bout, Mu sent an internal message saying Le Bourgeois was leaving to pursue other opportunities, according to a copy of the message seen by Bloomberg. Those cuts were intended to improve TikTok's 'efficiency,' according to former employees, though it wasn't clear to staff what factors contributed to a worker's efficiency rating. With these changes, ByteDance leaders are bringing in people who are familiar with what worked for the company in China, where Douyin, its TikTok clone for the Chinese market, has evolved into a US$490 billion shopping phenomenon. In addition to Mu, who was the head of Douyin's e-commerce, six other leaders with Chinese backgrounds were appointed in April, according to a different internal memo from Kang viewed by Bloomberg. Possible ban One challenge is that habits of many American users trend towards passive TikTok scrolling as opposed to making purchases in the app. Some US sellers told Bloomberg that they have also been reluctant to invest in the platform, given the possible ban. The final tally for the US e-commerce business's 2024 sales came in at around US$9 billion, according to an estimate by Singapore-based consultancy Momentum Works. TikTok Shop's US struggles have not halted the company's global shopping ambitions. ByteDance in 2021 rolled out e-commerce services in countries including Indonesia, Vietnam and the UK. In South-east Asia, it's already the region's biggest shopping platform after Shopee, according to Momentum Works. Last year, TikTok Shop opened in five countries in Europe, including Germany and Spain. The Europe expansion was delayed because the company first prioritised US growth, Bloomberg reported. This is a crucial month for TikTok in the US. The company will host merchants and creators in Los Angeles next week for a summit featuring some of the new leaders of the e-commerce unit. The current deadline for ByteDance to sell the TikTok's US operation is June 19 and there have been several interested suitors. The company came close to a possible spinoff in April to a consortium of investors that included Oracle, but the deal was scuttled in part because of Trump's trade war with China. Meanwhile, the churn of e-commerce employment continues in the Seattle area. Current and former TikTok Shop employees told Bloomberg that they get hounded by recruiting messages from Temu, another Chinese e-commerce competitor. BLOOMBERG
Straits Times
a day ago
- Straits Times
What's in a name? Proposal to rename Taiwan's Zhongzheng Roads reignites transitional justice debate
The controversy stems from the complicated legacy of Taiwan's longest-serving head of state, Chiang Kai-shek, who had used Zhongzheng as his adopted name. ST PHOTO: YIP WAI YEE – With more than 300 roads across the island carrying this name, Zhongzheng Road is Taiwan's most common – and most contentious – street name. And they may all disappear, if the government's proposal to rename every Zhongzheng Road goes to plan. When Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior resurfaced the initiative on June 2, it sparked immediate backlash from local officials who condemned it as a waste of money. In New Taipei city alone, officials estimate that it could cost upwards of NT$60 million (S$2.57 million) to rename all 22 Zhongzheng Roads across the city's 18 administrative districts to replace not just the major street signs but also individual home address plaques. The ministry, however, has defended the move as a human rights issue and must be taken seriously. 'The government cannot pretend to look at transitional justice only when there is money to do so, as that attitude does not reflect Taiwan's democracy and rule of law,' Minister of the Interior Ms Liu Shyh-fang told reporters. The controversy stems from the complicated legacy of Taiwan's longest-serving head of state, Chiang Kai-shek, who had used Zhongzheng as his adopted name. As the leader of the then-ruling Kuomintang (KMT) on mainland China, Chiang fought a civil war with the Communist Party of China after World War II and lost, fleeing with his government to Taiwan in 1949 where he ruled as President until his death in 1975. His authoritarian rule under martial law was controversial and while democratic reforms were undertaken by his son Chiang Ching-kuo, the current ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) under its transitional justice policy has been taking measures to right historical injustices of the authoritarian era. Changing the name of the Zhongzheng Roads is one of these moves. The hundreds of Zhongzheng Roads across the island had been named after Chiang following a postwar push by the KMT government to replace any old symbols of Japanese colonialism. Until 1945, Taiwan had been under Japanese rule for 50 years. One of the busiest Zhongzheng Roads in the southern city of Tainan, for example, formerly bore the Japanese name Suehirocho. The name has a Singapore connection. When Chinese philanthropists founded Chung Cheng High School - Zhongzheng Zhongxue in Mandarin - on Kim Yan Road in 1939, they had named it after Chiang, which was an 'indication that the Chinese community in Singapore was actively engaged with affairs in China then', according to the National Heritage Board . China at the time was fighting a war with Japan that began in 1937 and ended in 1945. But while some in Taiwan today see Chiang as a strong leader who fought against the communists and oversaw the island's path to economic prosperity, he is equally despised as a dictator who ruled with an iron fist. 'For some Taiwanese, anything related to Chiang is a reminder of a painful authoritarian past,' said Assistant Professor Ma Chun-wei, a political science analyst from New Taipei's Tamkang University. While some in Taiwan today see Chiang as a strong leader who fought against the communists and oversaw the island's path to economic prosperity, he is equally despised as a dictator who ruled with an iron fist. ST PHOTO: YIP WAI YEE Complicated legacy Taiwan transitioned to a democracy from the late 1980s and ranks among Asia's freest societies today, but it continues to wrestle with its authoritarian past. For its part, the modern KMT has taken steps to atone for its history. While serving as justice minister, former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou helped establish a foundation in 1995 to raise awareness of the White Terror years – a period of martial law covering almost four decades of brutal political purges from 1949 to 1987. But it was only after President Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP took office in 2016 that transitional justice work was made a top priority. In 2018, her administration set up an commission to review and redress injustices committed during the territory's authoritarian rule. Part of that involved exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals and going after assets illegally obtained by the KMT during its authoritarian rule. Among the commission's top recommendations was also the physical removal of all 'authoritarian symbols', including any road signs named after Chiang. In 2022, for instance, a section of Zhongzheng Road in Tainan city's West Central District was renamed Thng Tik-Tsiong Boulevard, in honour of the human rights lawyer who was executed by KMT troops in 1947. Other symbols include the many busts and statues of Chiang scattered across the island – the most prominent of which is the towering statue inside Taipei's National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, where millions of tourists flock every year to take selfies and watch the changing of the guard. Over the years, the government has made sporadic attempts to remove these symbols, albeit with limited success. Taiwan's main airport Taoyuan International Airport, for instance, was formerly known as the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, or Zhongzheng International Airport in Chinese. It was given its current name in 2006. And while hundreds of Chiang's statues have since been removed from Taiwan's schools, parks and other public spaces, there are still some 760 statues dotted around the island as of April 2024. Efforts to dismantle all of the symbols have consistently faced roadblocks, including protests from those who say that the move amounts to erasing history. 'Even among KMT supporters today, Chiang is no longer revered, but they cannot deny his contributions to Taiwan's development,' said Prof Ma. For now, the Ministry of the Interior said that it would engage officials from local governments – which would be in charge of executing the road sign changes – before proceeding further. But it would continue to promote its plan in line with transitional justice efforts, said Minister Liu. 'I understand many people are still sorting through their feelings about the past – and historical representations of it – which is why we will keep our communication on the issue open and clear,' she said on June 4. 'However, our position on the issue has not changed, and we will continue to promote the removal of the vestiges of authoritarianism,' she said, adding that the ministry provides subsidies for the renaming of street names. Several municipal government officials, many of them from the opposition KMT, have voiced objections to the ministry's proposal. Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an, who is Chiang Kai-shek's great-grandson, accused the ruling party of politicising issues and not doing actual work. Meanwhile, New Taipei Mayor Hou Yu-ih, also from the KMT, condemned the ministry's proposal as 'meaningless'. 'What people need is help to solve their problems. Does it make sense for the government to spend money on things like this?' he said. Ms Victoria Lin, a resident living on Zhongzheng Road in New Taipei's Zhonghe District, opposes the renaming of her road for a more pragmatic reason. 'Do you know how much trouble it will be to have to change my home address with the banks and all that?' said the 39-year-old, who works in real estate. Yip Wai Yee is The Straits Times' Taiwan correspondent covering political, socio-cultural and economic issues from Taipei. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Independent Singapore
3 days ago
- Independent Singapore
New Nee Soon MP to call for more penalties for animal welfare offences in wake of community cat deaths
SINGAPORE: After a spate of recent cat deaths, Lee Hui Ying, one of the newly elected Members of Parliament (MP) for Nee Soon Group Representation Constituency (GRC), said earlier this week that she will raise the issue of enhancing penalties against animal welfare offences. Since May, at least three community cats have been found dead in Nee Soon and Punggol. After a second cat was found lifeless in Nee Soon within a short amount of time, CNA reported that a bounty of S$5,000 had been put up in the hopes of finding the person responsible for the deaths. Ms Lee noted in a Facebook post late on Tuesday night that the National Parks Board (NParks) finished investigations into the death of King Kong, the Nee Soon community cat found dead early last month, saying that it had likely been due to a vehicular accident. The death of the second cat from the area is still under investigation. See also Strange goings-on at SPH 'There is an important need to care for our community, including animals, in our estate. Most importantly, creating a safer environment for all,' the MP wrote, adding that she intends to speak on more penalties for animal welfare offences when Parliament reopens. Ms Lee wrote that Singapore needs stronger laws and enforcement, stricter penalties for cruelty, and better protection for voiceless lives. 'Our animals don't have a voice — but we do,' she added. CNA reported on Jun 4 that NParks has looked into the deaths of four cats, two in Yishun, one in Punggol, and one in Tampines. NParks' group director of enforcement and investigation Jessica Kwok said that a road accident was also the likely cause of the death of the Punggol community cat. 'NParks understands the concerns on cases of alleged animal cruelty, and we would like to assure the public that we take all feedback received from the public on alleged animal cruelty seriously and will investigate them thoroughly, including looking at any new evidence presented,' she added. Meanwhile, a petition calling for stronger enforcement of animal cruelty laws in Singapore has been shared on the platform. 'Community cats in Singapore are increasingly becoming victims of abuse, with more reports of physical harm, poisoning, and neglect surfacing in recent months. These animals, who often rely on the care of volunteers and kind-hearted residents, suffer silently with limited protection. Beyond the cats themselves, caregivers and animal welfare groups are also affected emotionally and financially as they scramble to treat injuries, report abuse, and seek justice within a system that often falls short,' it reads. /TISG /TISG Read also: S$5K bounty offered to find cat killer at Nee Soon; petition for stronger enforcement of animal cruelty laws shared
