Yaw Shin Leong makes first apology to Hougang residents; urges support for the "candidate in blue"

SMU Assistant Professor of Law Eugene Tan commented that the timing of Yaw's open letter of apology had unnecessarily dispersed the focus on the by-election and was totally unhelpful to the Workers Party (WP). He reckoned that what people really wanted to know was whether WP had handled the issue appropriately and whether Party chief Low Thia Khiang had covered up anything. Yaw could have been the best person to clarify these doubts for the Party, but he completely side-stepped the issues and merely asked the voters to support ?the candidate in blue?, without making any reference to the WP or Png Eng Huat. Assistant Professor Eugene Tan felt that Yaw's apology lacked sincerity and he had treated the controversy too lightly. Yaw should have apologised for his past indiscretions and for abandoning his constituents. Instead he chose to re-surface the saga at this juncture. His doing so had cast the light back on an incident that was gradually being forgotten by the public.