10 May 2025: The NCM Haters Club

After the intensity of the GE I was going to allow myself to take a week off We, The Citizens but there's been too much drama!

A nod goes out to Anngee Neo, the most dedicated president of the GMS Haters Club, for giving me the inspiration for the headline of this week’s wrap. Anngee spoke to Currents about the GE2025 results—listen to it here.

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He managed to narrowly win the election but it still hasn’t been a good week for Ng Chee Meng. Stories of him being an ass to English and Literature teachers back when he was Minister of Education have been circulating online, spawning memes about having to stand when being spoken to and the dichotomy between “fiction” and “serious” books. To make things worse, a photo of him at dinner with Su Haijin—a Fujian gang member who's since been convicted in a gigantic money-laundering case—popped up online. As of Friday night, over 27,000 people have signed an online petition to “Stop Ng Chee Meng from Joining Singapore Cabinet”.

The uproar has pushed Ng, the most unpopular winner of GE2025, to publish a statement. In it, he claims that this meeting with Su Haijin was “part of [his] work [as the Secretary-General of NTUC] to engage with different companies and private sector leaders” to “better understand the concerns and challenges in different industries”. (Does he go for heart-to-heart dinners with blue-collar workers? 🤔 That’s much more relevant to his job as the labour chief.) After he learnt about the trouble Su was in, he had “no further interactions with him”. (So there were other interactions before? 🤨)

As for the MOE dialogue, Ng says he doesn’t remember exactly what he said to those teachers but nonetheless apologised “if any of [his] remarks came across as disrespectful”. He went on to say that he’s asked Prime Minister Lawrence Wong not to give him a spot in the Cabinet, so he can focus on serving his Jalan Kayu residents and working as the labour chief.

I wonder how the residents of Jalan Kayu—especially the 800+ who allowed him to pip Andre Low to the parliamentary seat—feel about this. Did they believe they were voting in a potential office-holder? Could that have been the deciding factor? Do they now feel like they’ve been scammed? I probably would. If Ng doesn’t step down (or get kicked out by the PAP) and trigger a by-election, then all Singaporeans can do right now is join the online pile-on.

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Other members of the PAP, including two ministers, have also dined with the money-laundering gangster. Ong Ye Kung and Chee Hong Tat issued a joint statement to say that they have nothing to do with Su Haijin and he was just some dude who happened to be at dinners hosted by a friend. It did not escape notice that Ng Chee Meng hadn’t been included in this joint statement. (I smell drama and I want to know more!)

Also caught in a photo was Lim Swee Say, the former manpower minister. Lim says that Su was the “only stranger” at the dinner, which was supposed to be a reunion for old friends.

Sam Goi, the tycoon who can probably now add “sabo king” to his “popiah king” moniker, has also come forward to say that he’d hosted these dinners in 2020, 2021 and 2022 and that they’d been in “full compliance with the applicable Covid safe management measures” (which was a problem, but honestly, not the biggest problem). Goi had earlier told Bloomberg (paywalled) that the dinners were “all for friends” and that he’d footed the bill.

These photos aren't enough to claim that any minister or PAP member has been involved in shady or illegal activity, but they still look terrible. At the very least, they contribute to the public perception of the ruling party as elites who move within an ultra-wealthy circle that includes individuals whose money might come from dubious sources. Even without the criminal element, is this appropriate for those in high political office? Was there conflict of interest and were all the safeguards and processes adhered to? It doesn’t take much for people’s thoughts to flit over to Iswaran’s scandal. And it's easy to look up the Rules of Prudence letter Lee Hsien Loong wrote to PAP MPs in 2020, in which he wrote:

As MPs, you will come across many different sorts of people. Many altruistic, public spirited individuals will help you without wanting anything in return, spending time and money to get community projects going and to serve residents. But a few will cultivate you to obtain benefits for themselves or their companies, to gain respectability by association with you, or to get you to influence ministries and statutory boards to make decisions in their favour. Gift hampers on festive occasions, dinners and entertainment, and personal favours big and small are just some of the countless social lubricants which such people use to ingratiate themselves to MPs and make you obligated to them.

You must distinguish between these two groups of people, and be shrewd in assessing the motives of those who seek to get close to you. At all times be seen to be beyond the influence of gifts or favours.

In 2024, Hazel Poa of the Progress Singapore Party filed a parliamentary question about gifts declared by civil servants and political officeholders. The answer from Chan Chun Sing, Minister-in-Charge of the Public Service and Minister for Education, made clear that

Civil servants and political officeholders must not ask for gifts or favours, especially when they are in a position to influence or affect any decision involving the other party. If it is not possible or it is impractical to decline gifts or meals, officers should declare and account for it according to established processes. […] In 2023, there were about 3,450 gift declarations made by civil servants and political officeholders. Of these, officers were allowed to retain 60%. About 14% of the declarations were for gifts valued $50 or more. We do not collect data on meal invitations centrally.

Did Ong Ye Kung and Chee Hong Tat declare these meals, which presumably cost more than $50, that Sam Goi paid for? It’s not clear from the statement signed off by their press secretaries. And unlike some other countries, Singapore doesn’t have a system where such declarations are published on a publicly accessible database.

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One of my gripes has long been that there’s a shortage of data on voter intentions and priorities, which greatly limits our analysis of election results. Ideally, such studies and surveys would be conducted by multiple independent and thoughtful institutions on a more regular and extensive scale, but at least we have some polling from Blackbox Research to clue us in.

Blackbox polled 500 voters just before Cooling-Off Day and found broadly even support for the PAP across age groups. Unsurprisingly, cost of living, GST increase and housing were issues that people were most concerned about, and the message about the need for a strong opposition in Parliament did resonate. But ultimately, it was “the ground game that made the difference”.

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On Wednesday morning I attended a court hearing for a constitutional challenge against presumption clauses in the Misuse of Drugs Act. Anti-death penalty activists have taken issue with these presumptions for years, because it shifts the burden of proof on to the accused, requiring them to prove "on a balance of probabilities" that they're not guilty of what the law presumes them to be. "On a balance of probabilities" is a concern because it means that it's not enough for the presumption to be potentially incorrect; the accused has to persuade the court that it is more likely than not to be wrong. This is especially troubling when the punishment is as high and irreversible as the death penalty.

On Wednesday, lawyers representing four death row prisoners argued that these presumption clauses fly in the face of the fundamental rules of natural justice—which include the principle that one is innocent until proven guilty—and are therefore unconstitutional.

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