The Usual Place Podcast

Workers’ Party’s Gerald Giam on why politics is like sports

The Aljunied GRC MP chats about his first term as an elected MP and being from an opposition party.

Natasha Ann Zachariah

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SINGAPORE – Workers’ Party (WP) MP Gerald Giam views politics the way he views sports: You compete according to the rules, you do your best, and at the end, there is a winner and a loser.

Whatever the result, both players should shake hands and be gracious.

“The loser would pick up the pieces, and try and do better the next time. And the winner, well, should make sure that they don’t shift the goalposts to ensure that they win better the next time,” he said.

“It’s the way I want to see politics,” explained the 47-year-old Aljunied GRC MP, who is looking after the Bedok Reservoir-Punggol division. He drew the analogy while sharing how he was introduced to pickleball by his residents, and has even joined them for a game.

Workers’ Party MP Gerald Giam (left) chatting with host and ST correspondent Natasha Ann Zachariah about being a first-term elected MP.
ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN

He recently dropped by The Usual Place podcast, where he spoke about his first term as an elected MP and the party’s morale after events such as Ms Raeesah Khan’s lying in Parliament when she was an MP and WP chief Pritam Singh’s recent trial.

The podcast episode was filmed on Feb 14.

In the lead-up to the upcoming general election, The Usual Place is featuring MPs and others involved in the event to find out how they are preparing for it.

Regarding the trials and resignations of fellow party members due to various reasons since the last general election, Mr Giam said that, internally, these events have “energised us in many ways”.

“We have to work doubly hard to win the trust of our residents and to ensure that we don’t let any of our core responsibilities like our municipal duties suffer because of these distractions,” he added.

There were personal challenges for him, too.

One of the “most difficult” speeches he has had to make in Parliament was on the matter of repealing Section 377A in 2022. He was

one of three WP MPs who did not support

scrapping the colonial-era law.

In Parliament, Mr Singh lifted the party whip to allow the party’s MPs to “not just vote according to their conscience, but also speak according to their conscience”, said Mr Giam on the podcast.

He said it was a significant move for Mr Singh to do so as it helped the party’s MPs reflect Singaporeans’ diversity of views on that issue.

“It’s a microcosm of how I think politics should be. There should be negotiation, sometimes behind closed doors, but at the end of the day, we all have to come together and come up with a unified position.”

But this unified position does not mean that all the WP MPs will think or vote the same way, he said.

As with the 377A issue, it meant that they agreed to reflect the different views of Singaporeans.

Mr Giam’s journey into opposition politics was not a straightforward one.

In a 2010 post on his personal blog, he wrote: “I used to think that being part of the PAP (People’s Action Party) government machinery was the only way to effect positive change in Singapore.”

It was why he switched jobs from being an IT consultant to work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2005. He also volunteered as a youth leader for more than seven years with the South West Community Development Council.

He joined socio-political online media platform The Online Citizen in 2006, and later became its deputy editor. He stepped down from the role when he joined WP in 2009.

Mr Giam, who runs a technology solutions firm that he founded in 2014, eventually concluded that if he wanted to make an impact and change policies for the better, joining an opposition political party would be the best way forward.

WP caught his attention during the 2006 General Election. He “read its manifesto from cover to cover and realised that this is a party that has values and policies, which I agree with”, and he wanted to contribute to its growth.

He added: “I felt that it’s very important to have an alternative party present – not just opposition parties for the sake of opposition parties – but having a strong alternative (such) that people really have a choice when they go to the polls.

“It’s not just casting a protest vote, but casting a vote for the party (which) they think is best to run their constituency.”

He first ran for Parliament in the 2011 General Election as a candidate in East Coast GRC. Although the team lost, he was selected to be one of the party’s two Non-Constituency MP representatives.

He stood again for election in 2015 with a different WP East Coast GRC team, and lost again.

In the 2020 General Election, he finally became an elected MP as part of the Aljunied GRC team. He is now also WP’s head of policy research.

When the conversation turned towards how

WP is screening candidates

for the next general election, Mr Giam said the process would put some people off stepping forward, but he sees it as “good deterrence” for those who do not want to be scrutinised.

“I think it’s a good thing... because it means that we don’t have to deal with a big scandal in the future,” he said.

“But I would hope that good candidates who may not be perfect people – and no one is – would be still willing to step forward and take that risk,” he added.

This latest episode is now out on ST Podcasts and The Straits Times YouTube channels.

Host: Natasha Zachariah (

natashaz@sph.com.sg

)

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Filmed by: Studio+65

Edited by ST Podcast producers: Teo Tong Kai and Eden Soh