On February 24th, Leon Perera, a Workers’ Party (WP) member of parliament (MP), stood up in Parliament to make an impassioned plea. “The [ruling] People’s Action Party (PAP) seems to be doubling down on this incorrect assertion, using its tremendous PR and communicative machinery.”

The PAP’s claim, repeated relentlessly for weeks, is that Singapore’s housing shortage would be worse if the government had listened to the WP. Its 2019 housing paper had apparently recommended a reduction in the annual supply of new build-to-order (BTO) public housing flats.

Perera, with a background in consulting, often combines sharp analysis with urgent, precise rhetoric. He is one of the few politicians to have ever left the redoubtable K Shanmugam, minister for law and home affairs, at a loss for words, during the debate on The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019 (POFMA).

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