SDP CEC and cadre members at the January 2022 Ordinary Party Conference Following the party’s first two Central Executive Committee meetings of 2022, all key positions in the CEC have been filled, and the official line-up finalised. The current CEC will serve a two-year term from January 2022. In a previous statement, the party announced that two new faces were elected to the CEC at the most recent OPC, which took place on 9 January 2022. They are Ms Min Cheong-Subramaniam, who was a candidate for Holland-Bukit Timah GRC in the 2020 General Election, and Mr Naresh Subramaniam, a media professi ..read more

The High Court yesterday resumed a hearing, held in chambers, to decide on the appeal initiated by the SDP against the correction direction made by the POFMA office under the direction of the alternate authority of the Minister of National Development during GE 2020. The hearing had adjourned on 11 September 2020 when the SDP asked for the Court to wait for the decision of the Court of Appeal ruling on the SDP’s original case against the earlier Correction Direction (CD) issued by the Ministry of Manpower and the direction against The Online Citizen which was heard together. In October 2021, t ..read more

After the SDP won a partial victory in court in the POFMA case against the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), the MOM quickly issued another POFMA against us yesterday. Unbelievable but true. The Court of Appeal had ruled in favour of the SDP over one of the Correction Directions the MOM issued against the SDP in December 2019. Specifically, it ruled that in one of our posts where we had stated that “locals” (ie. Singaporeans) were being displaced by foreigners in the PMET sector, the SDP was referring specifically to Singaporean citizens and not Singapore PRs. Very importantly, the court s ..read more

If there’s anything Singaporeans have learnt is that the PAP cannot be trusted to carry out its promises. A few concrete examples illustrate this point: 1. Dr Vivian Balakrishnan promised that the TraceTogether programme will be used only by the MOH for Covid-related purposes. Months later, it was revealed that the police had used the database for its own purposes. 2. The government promised that POFMA would be used only on a “false statement of fact” but imposed it on the SDP for a statement based on interpretation of statistics. (For the record, the matter took place in late 2019 and has sti ..read more

The handling of the Covid-19 pandemic by the Government’s Multi-Ministerial Task Force has been plagued with a distinct lack of coherence and direction. This has left Singaporeans confused and frustrated. The lack of a clear strategy in dealing with the pandemic has also left businesses unable to plan ahead. The reactive nature of the MMTF’s approach in dealing with outbreaks of infections has led to stop-start, on-again/off-again policies which had impacted adversely on both employers and employees. In light of this, the SDP has developed an 8-point plan to exit the pandemic and get Singapore ..read more

SADASIVAM VERIYAH, a strong advocate of democracy who spent decades in the background before finally answering the call to stand for election twice under the SDP ticket – in 2011 and 2015. We crossed paths in the mid-80s, during my first election foray in 1984 in Kg Kembangan. Always behind the scene, Sada has always been there to give unflinching support to our efforts in giving Singaporeans an alternative voice. In all the four elections that I participated in as a candidate, Sada was there. He was also a former teacher and the president of the Singapore Tamil Teachers Union. Sada, no doubt ..read more

PM speaking at May Day Rally (Photo credit: video screenshot from PMO website) In his May Day Rally speech, Mr Lee Hsien Loong cautioned: “I hope Singaporeans work with us, and not let down our guard. It is not time to relax yet…Do not make the mistakes other countries have done – celebrate too early, relax too fast, let your guard down.” The SDP will not have the Government take that tone with the people. Singaporeans have been exceedingly cooperative since the onset of the pandemic despite the many bungles the PAP has committed with regards to the spread of the disease. Singaporeans remember ..read more

Part of Kranji forest gone. Photo credit: Google Earth The SDP said in our first statement that the logging of the forested area could not have been done “by mistake” because the project had to be carried across government ministries and agencies. What is most telling is that the government had not only announced the project to be built in the area but moved quickly to develop the land there. On February 2020, Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing launched the Sungei Kadut Eco-District (SKED) masterplan which is part of the Agri-Food Innovation Park (AFIP) that would occupy the redeve ..read more

The shocking revelation that a huge part of the Kranji woodland was cleared “by mistake” raises serious questions. This revelation comes in the midst of widespread public outcry over the persistent gazetting of various forested areas in Bukit Batok, Clementi and Dover for development. Even while the Minister for National Development Desmond Lee fends off criticism over such moves, it is now revealed that a swathe of the Kranji forest has been razed. The JTC responded that the forest was “mistakenly” cleared. It added that this took place even as the authorities were in the midst of conducting ..read more

SDP CEC and cadre members at the January 2022 Ordinary Party Conference Following the party’s first two Central Executive Committee meetings of 2022, all key positions in the CEC have been filled, and the official line-up finalised. The current CEC will serve a two-year term from January 2022. In a previous statement, the party announced that two new faces were elected to the CEC at the most recent OPC, which took place on 9 January 2022. They are Ms Min Cheong-Subramaniam, who was a candidate for Holland-Bukit Timah GRC in the 2020 General Election, and Mr Naresh Subramaniam, a media professi ..read more