GE2025: Leong Mun Wai re-elected as PSP chief ahead of general election
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Progress Singapore Party NCMP Leong Mun Wai will take over as party chief from Ms Hazel Poa, who will be the party's vice-chair.
ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
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SINGAPORE – Non-Constituency MP (NCMP) Leong Mun Wai has been re-elected as party chief of the opposition Progress Singapore Party (PSP).
Mr Leong, who stepped down as secretary-general 13 months ago
He stepped down to take responsibility for a correction direction he received under Singapore’s fake news law for a social media post.
Mr Leong will take over the role from the party’s other NCMP, Ms Hazel Poa. He will be the PSP’s fifth leader since its founding in 2019. Ms Poa will be its vice-chair.
Mr Leong told reporters he was honoured to be asked to lead the party into the election, so it can “scale greater heights”.
He said Ms Poa has done a “tremendous job” in the last 12 months of organising the party’s structure to be ready for the election. In that time, he has focused on ground operations, he added.
The party leadership’s view is that he should now “orchestrate the whole campaign by integrating the structures we have, the strategies and also the ground troops that we have developed”, he said.
He added that there will be little change as he and Ms Poa have always worked closely together, saying: “This change is like a relay team, she did one part and then I take over.”
Ms Poa said she is happy with the new arrangement. “Mun Wai is ready to resume the duties of the secretary-general again, and I personally have some new responsibilities coming up as a foster parent, which will take up quite a bit of my time.”
Mr Leong was also asked about the optics of his return to the post, given the circumstances in which he stepped down in 2024.
“If we make a mistake, we should take responsibility. But that doesn’t mean that’s the end of one’s political career,” he replied.
“So at the right time when the situation demands, we should always step up, and that’s what I’m doing today.”
PSP founder Tan Cheng Bock, who will stay on as party chairman, said: “If we are wrong, we are wrong, but we are right, we will show you that this is the path to what we think is good for Singapore.”
He added that he is proud of Mr Leong for owning up to his earlier mistake, and said he had told him, “you must come back”.
“It shows the strength of the individual, not to just buckle and then just go ahead and leave,” Dr Tan said.
He added that there was “no contest” for the post of secretary-general. “It is just that Hazel wanted to, you know, pass the baton back to Mun Wai.”
The trio were speaking to reporters at the party’s headquarters in Bukit Timah Shopping Centre after the first meeting of its new central executive committee (CEC).
On March 20, the party voted six new names into its highest decision-making body,
The election was hotly contested, with 24 candidates vying for 12 elected seats on the CEC.
The election returned to the CEC Dr Tan and both NCMPs, as well as Mr A’bas Kasmani, Ms Wendy Low and Mr Phang Yew Huat.
Six new names were elected: Mr Samuel Lim, Mr Anthony Neo, Mr S. Nallakaruppan, Mr Soh Zheng Long, Mr Jonathan Tee and Mr Joseph Wong.
Mr A’bas, a safety practitioner and PSP candidate at the 2020 General Election, will be the party’s second vice-chairman, while Mr Nallakaruppan, another former candidate, will be its treasurer. Mr Nallakaruppan was the PSP’s first treasurer when it was founded in 2019.
Eight members of the previous CEC were not re-elected, including several who were candidates at the last election: Dr Ang Yong Guan, Mr Harish Pillay, Mr Jeffrey Khoo, Mr Nadarajah Loganathan and Mr Lim Cher Hong.
Of these, all except Dr Ang
The new CEC was voted in by the party’s roughly 100 cadres comprising its inner circle. It will serve for two years until March 2027.
This is Mr Leong’s second stint as party chief, after first becoming secretary-general in April 2023.
Ms Poa is the PSP’s fourth secretary-general, and was the party vice-chairman prior to that.
Mr Leong first took over after Mr Francis Yuen, who spent two years in the seat, vacated the position.
Dr Tan is the party’s first secretary-general.
Together with Dr Tan, Mr Leong and Ms Poa were on the PSP’s West Coast GRC slate that lost to a PAP team led by former transport minister S. Iswaran in the 2020 election.
It was the narrowest loss that year – which allowed the party to send Mr Leong and Ms Poa into Parliament as NCMPs.
The PSP is expected to contest several constituencies in the upcoming general election, including the newly redrawn West Coast-Jurong West GRC and the neighbouring Chua Chu Kang GRC.
Its slates in these wards have not been confirmed.
Independent political observer Felix Tan said he views Mr Leong reprising the role as “coming full circle”.
He said Mr Leong’s re-election is part of the process of the PSP moving on from the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act issue, which is unlikely to dent voters’ confidence in the new party chief.
The changes also demonstrate that PSP members have confidence in Mr Leong, said the academic.
“Both Mr Leong and Ms Poa are the star individuals we see in the CEC, so I think that will remain consistent,” he said, noting that Mr Leong will likely work with Ms Poa in West Coast-Jurong West GRC as it is an area they are familiar with.
Institute of Policy Studies senior research fellow Gillian Koh offered some ways to read the outcome.
As a young party, it is possible that frequent changes of leadership could be par for the course as the party consolidates itself around who its core team should be and what it stands for, she said.
Or, they could suggest that the party does not have enough talent or trusted members going into the election, resulting in it reverting to Mr Leong, she said.
Another possibility is that the party feels Mr Leong has established himself well for the PSP as an NCMP and that he and Dr Tan will be able to draw strong support as key pillars in the coming election, she added.
