GE2025: SDP targets NTUC-PAP relationship in final rally

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SINGAPORE – The Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) took aim at the relationship between the ruling party and the labour movement NTUC during the party’s final rally on the last day of hustings on May 1.

The SDP argued on Labour Day that the interests of local workers were not truly championed under the current labour union structure and that, if elected, it will advocate better rights for employees and greater distancing between the PAP and NTUC.

The rally at Evergreen Primary School – part of Sembawang West SMC, where SDP chief Chee Soon Juan faces PAP candidate Poh Li San for the single seat – saw 10 SDP candidates, including Dr Chee and party chairman Paul Tambyah, speaking in the final hours of the nine-day campaigning window ahead of Polling Day on May 3. 

In his speech, Sembawang GRC candidate Damanhuri Abas said NTUC’s role as a labour movement is to ensure checks and balances between workers and employers, but he added that it was too closely aligned to the ruling party.

“The PAP has timed this election to end on Labour Day at the May Day Rally. The PAP leaders showcased the partnership that has served them, but have they served you?” he said, referring to the May Day Rally speech

which Prime Minister Lawrence Wong delivered earlier in the day

.

Fellow candidate James Gomez said the SDP will push for workers to have the freedom to form and lead their own unions without interference. “We will seek to disentangle NTUC from the PAP. It should remain independent and clear on protecting the workers’ interest,” said Dr Gomez.

The night’s penultimate speaker, Dr Tambyah, defended SDP’s proposal for a single-payer healthcare system to replace current schemes like MediShield Life and CareShield Life. He said consolidating the schemes into a comprehensive insurance scheme would free up funds, which can be used to support primary care more effectively.

He was responding to Health Minister Ong Ye Kung, who on April 26

challenged the SDP to elaborate on its proposal

to reform the healthcare system.

Mr Ong is running for re-election in Sembawang GRC.

Dr Tambyah acknowledged that SDP’s plan will result in job losses for administrators who oversee the existing healthcare schemes, but said it will make room for more medical professionals and lower healthcare costs.

A single-payer system would serve as the largest purchaser of medical services and be able to negotiate lower prices, pushing costs down, he said.

Dr Tambyah drew comparisons to how pharmaceutical service providers today lower their prices to secure government contracts, such as for vaccines and other tenders.

“I invite Mr Ong to read our healthcare paper in detail and perhaps debate us on it,” he added.

Dr Chee, who was met with the loudest cheers of the night, wrapped up the rally by accusing the PAP of targeting him with “poisonous rhetoric”, which he said has exacted a heavy toll on him.

He also criticised the group representation constituency system, saying it had hindered his years-long push for a seat in Parliament – the latest being the removal of Bukit Batok SMC, where he had contested in the past.

In his nearly 30-minute speech, Dr Chee detailed numerous examples of being shunned for being “politically radioactive”, such as being fired from the National University of Singapore and other jobs.

He blamed the “vitriol and hateful rhetoric” from the ruling party, whose leaders had sued him in the past – forcing him into bankruptcy, which ruled him out in the 2006 and 2011 elections.

Dr Chee said: “They sack you, then they say you don’t have a job. They sue you, then they say you are bankrupt.

“They take away your constituency, and then they say you abandoned it.”

Reflecting on the current campaign, he said: “I am tired, but not defeated. This campaign has been long. It has been intense, but every step of the way I have tried to speak to your minds with reason, to appeal to your hearts with truth, and to stir your spirit with the hope of what can be.”