Workers' Party "straddling both sides of the fence" on hijab issue: Indranee

Senior Minister of State for Law and Education Indranee Rajah (above) has criticised the Workers' Party (WP) for not taking a clear position on the hijab issue. -- ST FILE PHOTO: DESMOND WEE
Senior Minister of State for Law and Education Indranee Rajah (above) has criticised the Workers' Party (WP) for not taking a clear position on the hijab issue. -- ST FILE PHOTO: DESMOND WEE

Senior Minister of State for Law and Education Indranee Rajah has criticised the Workers' Party (WP) for not taking a clear position on the hijab issue.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, she said they may sound sympathetic but actually "straddle both sides of the fence and merely calls for public dialogue".

"This does little to help resolve a delicate and difficult national issue and runs the danger of encouraging groups, including those from other communities, to take rhetorical positions and make public demands which they may then find difficult to move from," she said.

She was critical of what the WP and National Solidarity Party, who both issued statements last week, said amid growing calls to let uniform officers and nurses don the tudung or hijab.

She said they have "presented it in a simple, straightforward matter, with no trade-offs or downsides".

"If it were that easy, we would have been able to solve it long ago, and countries like Turkey (even with a government led by an Islamic party) would not be grappling with similar difficulties," she said.

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