The Workers' Party (WP) has a clear and unchanged position on how it regards the Non-Constituency MP scheme, party chief Pritam Singh said yesterday.
Responding to Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat's call for the opposition party to make clear whether it would accept NCMP seats, Mr Singh told reporters: "I'm quite surprised that Mr Heng, of all people, will make that comment."
He asked Mr Heng to look at the Hansard - the official reports of parliamentary debates - for what the party has said about the scheme, introduced in 1984.
"There's a long history of the position that the Workers' Party has taken on the NCMP scheme. It's on record, it's in the public domain, and Mr Heng just needs to look at that," he said at a press conference in Sengkang last night.
Asked to comment on Mr Heng's point that the WP opposed the scheme but still took up NCMP seats when offered, Mr Singh replied: "The stand has been made in Parliament. It's on the record... And that stand hasn't changed. And he should just review that record."
The NCMP scheme has been one of the core issues of this election, with the People's Action Party (PAP) touting it as a guarantee of opposition members in Parliament, and opposition parties criticising it as a ploy to dissuade Singaporeans from voting for them.
Last week, Mr Singh asked voters to reflect on why the PAP was so "magnanimous" in offering NCMP seats.
Other WP candidates also spoke out against the scheme during the hustings, including during the constituency political broadcast for Aljunied GRC last Thursday.
Former NCMP Gerald Giam spoke of the "limitations of that position", noting that it is hard to establish a base without constituents to serve and a town to manage.
He urged voters not to be swayed by the PAP's argument.
In his speech during the broadcast, former NCMP Leon Perera said the voices of NCMPs can be ignored, as "they don't carry the full mandate of the people".
"The voices of fully elected opposition MPs cannot be ignored by the PAP at the risk of losing more fully elected seats," Mr Perera added.
Former WP leaders have also voiced their opposition to the scheme.
In March 1985, then WP leader J. B. Jeyaretnam said the party objected to the NCMP scheme. He said "this idea was born out of hypocrisy on the part of the Government", and added that it undermined the emergence of a strong, credible opposition.
More recently, former WP chief Low Thia Khiang spoke on the matter when he moved a motion in Parliament for the WP's Associate Professor Daniel Goh to fill the NCMP seat which the party's Ms Lee Li Lian had turned down. Both were candidates in the 2015 General Election.
Mr Low, speaking in Parliament in January 2016, said the WP had long disagreed with the NCMP scheme which did not make parliamentary debates more robust. It was instead "a distraction of the fundamental meaning of Parliament".
"Any politician who aspires to enter Parliament must seek and obtain the mandate from the people to represent them, so as to seek and effect positive change for the people," he had said.
Still, WP members have taken up the seats offered to them as they "understand that the struggle for a functional democracy... must be fought from within the existing system", Mr Low said.
So, while the WP may oppose the scheme, it "does not oppose individual members who are willing to sacrifice their time and energy to contribute to the national debate in Parliament", he added.
