WP confident of avoiding Young PAP embarrassment
The Workers' Party (WP) is confident that its Youth Wing executive committee members will know how to make the right selection in recruiting members.
This comes after Young People's Action Party (YP) member Jason Neo sparked an uproar online after he had, in February, posted a picture of young Malay schoolchildren on a religious preschool bus with a caption saying, “"Bus filled with young t*******t trainees?”. The posting was made before he joined YP in June.
Speaking to Yahoo! Singapore on Saturday, WP Youth Wing president Lee Lilian stressed that she has faith that her Youth Wing executive committee members are aware of the code of conduct required, but admitted that these cases are hard to predict and can happen to anyone.
"We do have guidelines, but ultimately the members here have their own Facebook pages," she said. "The Youth Wing executive committee understands that they have a certain role to play to society and a certain image to portray, and I have every faith that they will know what, and what not, to do."
"But like we know, it can just happen to anyone," she added.
Lee, who was speaking on the sidelines of YouthQuake, a series of forum discussions organised by the WP Youth Wing, revealed that the party does not currently have a set of guidelines to deal with such a case if it pops up, and that they will "think about it when the time comes".
On Friday, YP chairman Teo Ser Luck told Channel NewsAsia that Neo's resignation from the party has sent the right signal to party members.
YP vice-chairman Zaqy Mohamad added that this was a lesson learnt for YP, and they may have to do a more thorough background check on members in the future. He said that YP will "work towards increasing our activists' awareness and understanding of the Islamic community and education, in particular, with regard to the Islamic kindergartens in Singapore".
