Diary of an Island

Friday night (10 Mar) saw the three main opposition groups meeting at PKMS to discuss electoral strategy and agree on who will contest which ward in order to avoid three way fights that will split the opposition vote. I would ordinarily dismiss mention of SDP infighting in today's Sunday Times report of the meeting by Peh Shing Huei. However, given Chee Soon Juan's past record (in staging a coup d'etat to take over the SDP) and the recent defection of three SDP members (Cheo Chai Chen, Dr Vincent Yeo and Lim Tung Hee as mentioned by Peh Shing Huei & Ken Kwek in their 5 Mar article 'Opposition parties jostle to contest hot seats') to the NSP (one of the founding parties of the SDA), it sounds like the SDP are undergoing a problematic period. Today's Sunday Times has the full report of the meeting: 'The night of the opposition huddle' (p8).

The big opposition news was carried on Sat 11th by The New Paper ('JBJ: Spoiler or saviour?' by Clarence Chang on p10) and Weekend Today (last paragraph of Loh Chee Kong's article 'Opposition could field up to 52 candidates' on p4): that J B Jeyaratnam might be able to clear his defamation lawsuit debt, assemble a team, and run one last time! Possible wards include Tg Pagar (Lee Kuan Yew), Marine Parade (Goh Chok Tong) or Ang Mo Kio (Lee Hsien Loong). See the Map of Electoral Divisions for details about these constituencies and List of Constituency for who the current MPs are.