Sunday Times: PM: Come clean; Gomez: I'm sorry
ELECTION 06
Workers' Party candidate finally admits he did not submit minority candidate form to Elections Dept
Sim Chi Yin
PHOTO: EDWIN KOO
'Please accept my sincere apologies if my actions on April 26 caused any distress or confusion to the staff of the Elections Department.'
- MR GOMEZ, at the Workers' Party rally last night (above)
MR JAMES Gomez admitted last night that he had not submitted his minority candidate form and apologised to the Elections Department for suggesting that he had done so.
He gave the statement after the People's Action Party (PAP) repeatedly asked him and his party to come clean on the matter.
At a rally in Nee Soon East, the Workers' Party candidate for Aljunied GRC read out a prepared speech, saying that he failed to hand in his form on Monday because he was distracted by his busy schedule leading up to Nomination Day.
"Please accept my sincere apologies if my actions on April 26 caused any distress or confusion to the staff of the Elections Department," he said.
His party secretary-general Low Thia Khiang had invited him on stage at the rally in Yishun Avenue 11 to "set the record straight".
Mr Low said: "I have spoken to James Gomez and found out what happened. They (the PAP) are making a mountain out of a molehill."
He added that if the PAP thought he would be intimidated by its big guns and "duck the issue", they had made the wrong judgment.
The statements from the WP last night came after PAP leaders had spent the past two days urging Mr Gomez and his party chiefs to tell the full story.
At the heart of the controversy was an assertion by Mr Gomez on Wednesday to the Elections Department that he had submitted his minority race candidate form and that he had not received any confirmation. He asked the department to check and warned of "consequences".
When told later that a security camera recording showed he had not handed in his form and had instead put it in his briefcase, he said he would get back to the department if there was further information.
Then on Nomination Day, he brushed off reporters, saying he did not discuss "election administration over the media".
The Elections Department then released the recording and a transcript of his conversation to leave no doubt about the integrity of the electoral process. But Mr Gomez maintained he had not "reviewed any of these items".
Yesterday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and the PAP team in Aljunied GRC asked Mr Gomez to take the issue seriously and urged Mr Low to view it with the "utmost seriousness".
"(The) best thing is just to come clean and tell Singaporeans what happened...was it a mistake, was it not a mistake?" said Mr Lee, speaking after a walkabout in Anchorvale Link.
"I think it's a serious matter for the Workers' Party. It's not just a Gomez matter, but a matter which the WP has to take seriously."
The PAP's first assistant secretary general Wong Kan Seng, who in his role as Deputy Prime Minister oversees the Elections Department, also stressed that the issue went beyond Mr Gomez.
"It concerns the sort of political party that the WP is, and the standards of accountability and transparency that it upholds," he said at the PAP's headquarters in Bedok yesterday afternoon.
He added that Mr Low had said, when introducing his party's candidates, that they all meet the criteria of credibility, capability and character.
But he wanted to know what WP would do now that the issue had been raised and seriou s questions were being asked.
"Singaporeans deserve answers to these important questions, from a party that aspires to become a First World opposition."
If it were a PAP candidate involved, Mr Wong said, the party would have immediately investigated, gotten to the bottom of things and directed the candidate to immediately and publicly clear the air.
And if the explanation was not satisfactory, it would withdraw the candidate and apologise immediately.
At the WP rally last night, the crowd broke in applause when Mr Low read Mr Gomez's apology in Mandarin. The WP chief said he had spoken with Mr Gomez and found out it was an oversight.
"The Workers' Party is fair. We are prepared to apologise. We are not unreasonable people."
Speaking to The Sunday Times later, Mr Low said the party did not apologise earlier because it did not think it was an issue. It was "an innocent mistake" and Mr Gomez's honesty was not in doubt, he added.
simcy@sph.com.sg
