The Workers’ Party (WP) is looking to field a younger, more social media-savvy slate of candidates for the coming General Election (GE), according to Secretary-General Low Thia Khiang on Aug 12. In the 10 days preceding that statement, four potential new faces for the party set up their public Facebook pages.
The four – lawyers He Ting Ru, 32, and Dennis Tan, 44, as well as sales consultant Cheryl Denise Loh, 32, and associate librarian Mohamed Fairoz Shariff, 36 – all set up their public Facebook pages between Aug 2 and Aug 10.
All four have been sighted during WP walkabouts and identified by various media as potential new candidates at the upcoming GE.
Of the four, Ms He has attracted the most attention, with some calling her WP’s answer to the People’s Action Party’s Member of Parliament (MP) Tin Pei Ling or the National Solidarity Party’s possible candidate Kevryn Lim.
An energetic start to the #sg50 festivities! While out and about in Geylang Serai today, one of the shop owners…
Posted by He Ting Ru on Friday, 7 August 2015
She is the most popular of the quartet – as of Aug 14, her Facebook page has 976 likes compared to Ms Loh (723), Mr Fairoz (156) and Mr Tan (3) – and is also the only one among the four potential new WP candidates to also hold both a Twitter and an Instagram account.
And off we go to visit!
Posted by Cheryl Denise Loh on Sunday, 9 August 2015
Their posts are unmistakably political in nature, with Ms He posting about her walkabouts in the Katong and Geylang Serai area. Both fall within the Marine Parade GRC boundaries. Mr Fairoz shared photos of his house visits in Simei (East Coast GRC) and Fengshan SMC.
Posted by Mohamed Fairoz Shariff on Tuesday, 4 August 2015
Posted by Dennis Tan on Sunday, 9 August 2015
ALREADY ONLINE
While Mr Low seeks to bring in social media candidates, the existing WP MPs are ramping up their activity on social media, too.
For instance, party chairman Sylvia Lim set up her Instagram account on Wednesday with a picture of her having a meal at a Fengshan hawker centre. Her photo caption, which included #reasonstowin, sparked speculation that she may leave Aljunied GRC to run in the Single Member Constituency (SMC).
That said, she has not updated her Facebook or Twitter profiles since 2011.
Chair of WP’s media team, non-constituency MP (NCMP) Gerald Giam, 37, is a more active online presence, gathering more than 5,000 likes on his Facebook page, more than 300 followers on Instagram and more than 2,000 followers for hisTwitter account that was created in 2009.
Punggol East SMC MP Lee Li Lian, also 37, has 12,000 likes on her equally active Facebook page, and also more than 300 followers on her Instagram account, which was created nearly five years ago.
MPs Faisal Manap, Png Eng Huat and Pritam Singh as well as NCMP Yee Jen Jong have between 2,000 and 10,000 Facebook likes between them.
Topping them all, however, is Mr Chen Show Mao. The 54-year-old party treasurer has 41,000 fans on Facebook and more than 14,000 followers on Twitter, making him the most social media savvy candidate in WP’s ranks – at least for now.
The glaring exception? Mr Low himself. The party Secretary-General does not have a social media account of his own, although some supporters manage a Facebook Community Page with news about him. It has not been updated since October 2011.
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com
