Much has been said about the upcoming presidential election and Speaker of Parliament Halimah Yacob, whom many are confident about being a clear shoo-in.
Throughout the ongoing controversy of having the path cleared for a member of the ruling People’s Action Party to become head of state, netizens are expressing scorn that the lady was already ‘practising’ for the role when she graced the recent National Day Parade (NDP) rehearsals as the stand-in for the president. Why was she already reviewing the parade when she was not a president, angry folks exclaimed.
But their distress is unfounded. You see, Halimah’s actually been carrying out the role of the parade’s reviewing officer since 2013, way before anyone believed that she’d stand a chance to be president. In fact, the job of inspecting the military parade traditionally falls on the Speaker of Parliament (which is her) and the Defence Minister during NDP previews. The president only takes on the task during the actual NDP on Aug 9.
Sure Boh Singapore has rightly pointed out how Halimah has graced the NDP Preview Session as the reviewing officer over the past couple of years:
In other words, calm yo’self down — there’s nothing shady about her standing in the president’s place during the rehearsals. It is her job to do so as Speaker of Parliament.
In any case, her pending consideration to run in the election caused quite a stir on different fronts. The upcoming presidential election is reserved for Malays, but officially she’s of Indian descent due to her father being Indian-Muslim, raising questions of what constitutes “Malayness”.
But mainly the unhappiness stems from her close links with the ruling political party — it’s deemed by many as favoritism and the further strengthening of the PAP’s power. The abrupt change to only allow Malays to run for president is also popularly presumed as a move to prevent Dr. Tan Cheng Bock from running for president again, especially since he very nearly beat PAP stalwart Dr. Tony Tan in 2011.
