I am not sure if many people know that Vincent of the SDP is the son of the acclaimed and well respected principal of Raffles Institution (RI), the top boys’ school in Singapore. He even taught Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong when he was a student in RI. SM Goh even penned the forward to his former principal’s memoirs.
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I have been curious about whether Eugene Wijeysingha would support his son in his quest and there’s a great article in the Today paper about it. He disapproved, was apprehensive and is now advisor to his son which I think is just about what any concerned father would do. Reminds me of my own father.
I can totally relate to Vincent when he reveals he faced a mid-life crisis and admire him for taking the risk and following his principles. Here is an extract of the article, Disapproving Dad Now Plays Counsellor to Him.
Huddled around the television set last Saturday night, they watched Mr Vincent Wijeysingha’s (picture) joust with the members of the ruling party, which included Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, in a televised political forum organised by Channel NewsAsia.
Midway through, his father – Mr Eugene Wijeysingha, the well-known and much-admired former principal of Raffles Institution – boomed: “Never call a Minister by his first name!”
That moment captured how the senior Wijeysingha – still “very much an Establishment man”, in Vincent’s words – has taken to the 40-year-old bachelor’s decision last July to don Opposition colours: From disapproval and apprehension initially, to now playing counsellor on the proper behaviour a fledgling politician should have.
Said the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) new face: “He was concerned about my political aspirations but he understood the motivations … and he has now accepted it. Because he’s always told us to stand up for what we believe … so it is precisely his values that propelled me into the political sphere.”
The executive director of civil society group Transient Workers Count Too first mused about entering the political fray in 2009, during what he called “a mid-life crisis”.
“You look back at your life and say, what have I done and what am I going to do for the next half of my life? My life was very settled but there wasn’t any meat to my life,” he said.