Cheng Bock invited to Istana party ‘by mistake’

SINGAPORE — In late December last year, former People’s Action Party Member of Parliament (MP) and presidential candidate Tan Cheng Bock received and accepted an invitation — as per previous years — to attend this Sunday’s Chinese New Year garden party organised for grassroots leaders at the Istana.

About two weeks later, he received a phone call from his ex-parliamentary colleague, Minister in Prime Minister’s Office Lim Swee Say, apologising and informing him that the invitation had to be retracted because the People’s Association (PA) had invited him by mistake. Mr Lim also sent him a personal email to apologise.

Yesterday, two days before the party, Dr Tan brought up the matter publicly in a Facebook post, prompting Mr Lim to express his surprise at the move.

Responding to media queries, Mr Lim said: “I was heartened that Dr Tan very graciously accepted my explanation over the phone. So I am surprised that he now brings this up publicly as an issue.”

Dr Tan did not respond to calls and SMSes from this newspaper.

Mr Lim, who is the PA’s Deputy Chairman, said the organisation reviews and refreshes the invitation list periodically to “enable a wider base of invitees to attend the reception”. “The most recent review was conducted a few months ago,” he said.

“Instead of inviting all ex-advisers to grassroots organisations repeatedly for 20, 30 years or even longer, we decided to limit the list to only ex-advisers who stood down in the immediate past General Election.”

This would exclude Dr Tan, who stepped down in 2006.

But the PA made the mistake of using the old invitation list instead of the updated one, and Mr Lim said he phoned Dr Tan and other affected invitees to explain the mistake. He then sent personal emails to apologise again.

The PA did not respond to media queries on the number of affected invitees.

The party will be hosted by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and the Cabinet Ministers, with about 4,000 grassroots leaders and their spouses expected to attend.

In his Facebook post, which had received more than 2,500 “likes” and attracted close to 600 comments as at 8pm yesterday, Dr Tan said he had been invited to the garden party since 1980 and had attended each event, meeting grassroots leaders and old colleagues and exchanging festive greetings.

He said the warm reception by grassroots leaders was “overwhelming” and became more so after he stood in the Presidential Election in 2011. Dr Tan was one of four candidates in the contest, garnering 34.85 per cent of votes, but losing to President Tony Tan Keng Yam, who received 35.2 per cent of the votes.

Dr Tan, 73, said he had to be helped back to his car at last year’s party “because the crowd kept me from moving forward”. He added: “I shall miss meeting all these friends there again this Sunday.”

Apart from the garden party, a separate tribute party for Singapore’s pioneer generation will also be held at the Istana on Sunday. This will be attended by 1,500 Singaporeans.

Former Potong Pasir MP and veteran opposition politician Chiam See Tong and his wife, Non-Constituency MP Lina Chiam, are among those invited to the tribute party, Mrs Chiam confirmed yesterday.

Meanwhile, the Workers’ Party said in response to TODAY’s queries that none of its MPs or NCMPs received an invitation to either of the parties on Sunday.