PSP introduces 5 more candidates; co-founder of The Independent named as Kebun Baru SMC contender

• Five new faces include two ex-army men and an intellectual property lawyer
• Mr Kumaran Pillai confirmed that he will run in Kebun Baru SMC
• PSP has not said which candidates will contest in other areas it is eyeing

SINGAPORE — The Progress Singapore Party (PSP) on Thursday (June 24) announced that it has five more candidates for the coming General Election (GE), including a former army lieutenant-colonel, an intellectual property lawyer and the former publisher of sociopolitical website The Independent Singapore, Mr Kumaran Pillai.

Mr Pillai was also confirmed to be contesting in the newly drawn Kebun Baru Single Member Constituency (SMC).

With the five, the party has now introduced 17 candidates in total. It plans to unveil more on Friday.

Party chief Tan Cheng Bock said in a Twitter post on Tuesday that his party will run in nine constituencies across the island. 

These are the West Coast Group Representation Constituency (GRC), Chua Chu Kang GRC, Nee Soon GRC, Tanjong Pagar GRC, Pioneer SMC, Kebun Baru SMC, Hong Kah North SMC, Marymount SMC and Yio Chu Kang SMC.

Aside from Mr Pillai in Kebun Baru SMC, PSP has not said who among its candidates will be running in each of these wards.

Dr Tan has also said that the party’s plans may change up until Nomination Day on June 30.

The five new faces PSP introduced on Thursday are:

• Mr Kumaran Pillai, 49. He will contest Kebun Baru SMC, which was part of Nee Soon GRC before it was carved out this year. He confirmed this when asked by TODAY at the press conference, saying the “cat is out of the bag”. He left The Independent Singapore, which he had co-founded, in February to join politics. He now manages several startups and is the chief executive officer of Apple Seed, a venture accelerator. He wants to champion entrepreneurship, create new jobs and make sure small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) get back on their feet in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

• Mr Michael Chua, 55. He is the PSP’s organising secretary and a central executive committee member. He attended the London School of Economics and Political Science on a Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) Merit scholarship. He left the army as a deputy brigade commander in 2016, and held stints at various firms linked to state investment firm Temasek and SMEs before starting his own business. 

• Mr Nadarajah Loganathan, 57. He retired from SAF as a lieutenant colonel in 2009 after 25 years and is now an educator. He has known Dr Tan since 2003, when the latter was still Member of Parliament for Ayer Rajah SMC. He was also one of Dr Tan’s assentors when the latter ran in the 2011 Presidential Election. He wants to promote equal chances for all and push for Singaporeans to be given first priority in job opportunities, he said.

• Ms Wendy Low, 43. She is an intellectual property lawyer at Eldan Law LLP and has advocated for women’s issues with various non-governmental organisations in Hong Kong and Singapore, including the Association of Women for Action and Research, a gender equality advocacy group. She volunteers with Justice Without Borders to provide pro-bono legal assistance to domestic workers who have been abused or unfairly treated at work. Mr Chua and her have been spotted on the ground conducting PSP outreach efforts in Tanjong Pagar GRC.

• Mr Damien Tay Chye Seng, 51. He has three decades of commercial operations in multinational corporations and is now a customer service manager. He wants better job opportunities for Singaporeans, to bridge the inequality gap and to champion climate change. He has been seen doing outreach for PSP in Nee Soon GRC, alongside three other candidates whom the PSP has named: Mr Bradley Bowyer, Mr Taufik Supan and Mr S Nallakaruppan. 

In his first press conference with the media as a potential GE candidate, Mr Pillai said that he stepped away from overseeing editorial work at The Independent to ensure the journalists’ independence.

“In journalism, there is this concept of the state and the church. Should we get elected in Parliament, the Government shouldn’t be putting undue pressure on a news outlet. That’s the reason why I think that separation of powers, of duties are important,” he said.

He was motivated to join PSP after Dr Tan told him last September that writing and championing causes online for close to seven years was “not enough”, and that he should “take the fight to Parliament”. 

Before joining the party earlier this year, Mr Pillai had a chat with his wife, who thought he was “off his rocker” and noted the challenges faced by opposition figures, he said. 

But he reassured her by pointing out that he is among “men of calibre” at PSP. 

“We are careful. The risks that we take are all very calculated,” he said.

As for Mr Chua and Mr Loganathan, who were former army men, they were asked to respond to critics who might question their background, given that Dr Tan himself had just said on Wednesday that there was “too much mixing” between the people serving in the government and the military and civil service.

Speaking to the media then, Dr Tan had said: “Politicians, civil servants, army. Look, who are the people coming now representing the PAP (People’s Action Party)? You are either in the army or you are in the civil service. How can they really understand Singapore?” 

Mr Chua said that Dr Tan’s comment was about the overall make-up of the Cabinet, and not about any one individual. 

“The challenge is that with such a Cabinet, which is dominated by people (with) military as well as civil service backgrounds, there is a very serious danger of groupthink,” he said. “What we need is balance and diversity.”

He added that while he and Mr Loganathan have military backgrounds, they had also spent a substantial number of years in the private sector, so their experiences are not one-dimensional.