SINGAPORE: Singaporeans need to vote for candidates who have built up trust and close relationships with counterparts in the US and China, said Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on Thursday, urging voters to re-elect his cabinet at a May 3 poll.
\nAddressing a 1.4 million-strong labor union on the last day of campaigning, Wong warned of economic turbulence and job losses if US tariffs slow global growth. His government has warned the trade-reliant economy may face a possible recession.
\n\u201cWe must expect more pressure on us and to navigate these pressures, it will take experience and skill. It will take people in government who have built up trust and close relationships with their counterparts in both America and China,\u201d Wong said.
\nHe said voters needed to re-elect his whole team to effectively deal with these economic headwinds.
\n\u201cI have backups, I have reserves, sure. But everyone knows that the team cannot function at the same level. It\u2019s the same in any organization, and it will be so in our next cabinet if we end up with such a loss,\u201d he said, referring to the possible loss of his deputy prime minister.
\nSingapore\u2019s ruling People\u2019s Action Party, in power since 1959, is widely expected to be easily re-elected, but there is growing unhappiness with its governance in the face of rising costs of living.
\nDeputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong was nominated at the 11th hour in a hotbed contest in a ward in northeast Singapore in an effort to stop the main opposition Workers\u2019 Party, which won 10 seats in the last parliament.
\nCampaigning in recent days has zeroed in on Gan being new to the area, after an incumbent ruling party candidate called the opposition team strangers. The opposition fired back, asking if Gan was the real stranger to the constituency.
\nWong has thrown his weight behind Gan, calling him his \u201ctaskforce man\u201d because Gan co-headed the COVID-19 taskforce and is now chairing the \u201ceconomic resilience\u201d taskforce dealing with the impact of US tariffs.
\n\u201cThe key person in charge of this work is no stranger to you. He is no stranger to the whole of Singapore,\u201d Wong said on Thursday.
\nThis is the first electoral test for Wong, who took over from long-time premier Lee Hsien Loong last year as leader of the People\u2019s Action Party.
\nSix political parties and an independent candidate have rallies scheduled for Thursday night.
\nParties get to fire their last salvos on Thursday before 2.76 million voters go to a compulsory poll on Saturday after a short nine-day campaign season. Friday is designated as a \u201ccooling off\u201d day, meant for voters to decide on their ballot, and parties are not allowed to campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SINGAPORE: Singaporeans need to vote for candidates who have built up trust and close relationships with counterparts in the US and China, said Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on Thursday, urging voters to re-elect his cabinet at a May 3 poll. Addressing a 1.4 million-strong labor union on the last day of campaigning, Wong warned of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":80435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80436,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80420\/revisions\/80436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}