Progress Singapore Party unveils four new faces, including former IPS research fellow

SINGAPORE — The Progress Singapore Party (PSP) unveiled four new faces during a virtual outreach session on Thursday (June 4), and they included a former research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, a think-tank at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Dr Tan Meng Wah is now an industry consultant teaching at Nanyang Technology University, with its Master of Science in Technopreneurship & Innovation programme. He had studied extensively on the topic of income inequality in Singapore.

PSP is headed by Dr Tan Cheng Bock, 80, a former Member of Parliament with the ruling People’s Action Party.

The three other new faces introduced were: 

• Mr Kumaran Pillai, 49, who stepped down as publisher of sociopolitical website The Independent Singapore in February

• Mr Harish Pillay, 60, head of community architecture and leadership and chief technology architect at IT firm Red Hat 

• Ms Gigene Wong, 53, a human resource specialist at Wison Offshore & Marine who used to be chief executive officer of Gulf Oil Yantai, a manufacturing firm in Shandong, China

They add to the six people introduced on May 21, who were:

• National University of Singapore law undergraduate Choo Shaun Ming, 22, the youngest member introduced so far

• Workplace safety senior trainer Abas Kasmani

• Marketing executive Jeffrey Khoo

• Lawyer Wendy Low

• Chartered accountant Lu Kee Hong

• Training consultant Nadarajah Loganathan

Thursday was the second time that the new opposition party engaged residents living in the western parts of Singapore through video conferencing tool Zoom.

The online sessions on the day and on May 21 were each two-hour long and streamed live on Facebook as well.

As of Thursday, the first session had been viewed more than 47,000 times on Facebook, while the second had 23,000 views. An average of some 800 viewers tuned in live on Thursday.