Workers’ Party keeps Pritam Singh as secretary-general after conviction

The Workers' Party kept Pritam Singh as secretary-general after a special cadres conference on June 28 backed him by a supermajority, preserving the party’s most visible figure even after his conviction for lying to a parliamentary committee and his removal from the formal opposition-leader post. Gerald Giam, a member of the party’s Central Executive Committee, said the cadres had endorsed Singh after he took questions at the meeting.

The conference was called after a requisition from 25 cadre members at the end of 2025, and Singh said no one challenged his position during the session. The party’s biennial elections were held the same day, with Sylvia Lim re-elected as chair of the Central Executive Committee and 12 other members chosen to the committee, keeping the leadership slate intact as the party managed the fallout from Singh’s case.

Singh’s retention matters because the Workers' Party is Singapore’s largest opposition force and one of the few institutions able to project a durable alternative inside the country’s tightly managed political system. A Singapore court found him guilty in February 2025 of giving false testimony to a parliamentary committee in 2021 about a party member, and the High Court dismissed his appeal in December. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong removed him as Leader of the Opposition in January 2026, saying the post had become untenable after the conviction.

The office, formally recognized in 2020, was created politically rather than in Singapore’s Constitution or Parliament’s Standing Orders. That gave the prime minister room to strip Singh of the title even as the party kept him in charge. The role comes with confidential briefings on national security and external relations, an office in Parliament House, staff support, a parliamentary allowance double that of an ordinary MP, longer speaking time in debates and some consultation on select committee appointments, making it more than a ceremonial label.

Wong had asked the Workers’ Party to nominate another lawmaker not involved in the scandal, but the party did not do so. The party won 10 seats in last year’s general election, and Singh remains its most recognizable political face. Walid Jumblatt Abdullah, a political scientist at Nanyang Technological University, has said the practical effect of Singh’s removal would mostly be limited to allowance and speaking time, underscoring how little the legal setback has shifted his standing inside the opposition.