WP Youth Wing President’s Address
Delivered at the Workers’ Party Youth Wing Conference 2006
Dear WP Youth Wing Members,
It gives me great pleasure to convene this conference after GE 2006 as your elected President.
Having recently contested in the national elections I hope to pass on my experiences, as I am sure many of the candidates present here today do too, to as many of you as possible with a view to growing the WP into a more agile, responsive and responsible election platform.
Many of you have provided invaluable assistance during this past GE. From myself and all the candidates present or otherwise: Thank you very much, your efforts are not in vain and they are very much appreciated. Your continual support is vital for the WP to move on to the next phase of growth, which I believe the Youth Wing is well placed to undertake.
As the WP grows and as the Youth Wing grows it necessitates some changes in operations and perhaps even our constitution. In the activities to come I wish for the members to own the organization. You, the Youth Wing members, will decide what is best for the Youth Wing going forward through a democratic process.
I would like to reiterate some points from our Terms of Reference:
That the WP Youth Wing is committed to supporting:
Hammer Sales
Political Education of the Youth
Area and Constituency Committees formed by the Party
Any activity organized by the Party
Some or many of you are familiar with Hammer Sales, Area and Constituency Committee work and Party organized activities. For Political Education I hope that all of us will serve as Ambassadors of The Workers’
Party in practicing, spreading and inculcating a truly democratic mindset to combat inequalities, particularly political inequalities, in Singapore. To this end, a series of induction workshops will shortly be organized at the Party level and I encourage all of you to attend these workshops. While there are materials currently available you are all free to contribute to making our messages even more effective through a process of consultation and peer reviews.
With this knowledge shared and gained, we as members of the WP Youth Wing are tasked, each and every one of us, with bringing up initiatives that will impact Singaporeans in the political, social and economic sphere as it is beneficial to Singapore and to the Workers’ Party. We are the agents of change. Change against some forms of conservatism which retard growth of the citizenry in the practice of citizenship, change to the culture that prevents Singaporeans from exercising their democratic rights, change to the culture that
breeds fear of opposition politics or just plain old politics for that matter, change to the culture that is upholding all these fears which politically paralyzes many Singaporeans. It is to this end that political education is a critical task that must be carried out by the Youth Wing.
It is my duty, as President, to promote our initiatives at the Party level for adoption and practice where feasible and possible.
Thank you.
Perry Tong
President
Workers’ Party Youth Wing
