A speech by The Workers' Party (WP) new face Siti Alia Abdul Rahim Mattar has resulted in online discourse regarding candidates speaking on global issues at election rallies.

At the party's first rally for General Election (GE) 2025 on April 25, the 43-year-old lawyer said that while Singaporeans meet their MPs to discuss "bread and butter issues", they would also like to "discuss the effects of certain laws or the government's positions on certain global issues".

"The concern for the humanitarian crisis in Palestine crosses the boundaries of race and religion. It is something that many Singaporeans, regardless of their ethnicity and beliefs, have expressed concern about," she said.

Clips of Siti Alia making these statements were stitched together and shared on Reddit with the title "WP's Siti Alia declares Palestine is important global issue, more important than bread and butter Punggol issues?"

This prompted a heated debate among netizens, some of whom criticised her for mentioning the topic during a GE rally.

One such comment read: "We are talking about Singapore and Singapore's policies and government. Singapore is so small, what use would that have on Palestine, which is halfway across the world?"

"We have matters that need to be fixed within Singapore borders and this topic being mentioned in a Singapore GE rally makes things very unappealing to me," read another comment.

Netizens who claimed they were at the rally in person wrote that they saw people "turn around and walk off" upon Siti Alia's mention of the topic.

Some other commenters, however, pointed out that she did not say the Israel-Hamas conflict took priority over local matters, adding that the post was misleading.

One such netizen wrote: "She didn't say in verbatim that the Palestine cause is more important than bread and butter issues in the video. That was inferred by [the Reddit post]."

"Her point is that such an important and sensitive global issue was inserted into the MOE curriculum without consulting parents. I don't think her intention was to express any stance on this issue," wrote another commenter.

'We want healthy discourse'

Siti Alia, who is a candidate for Punggol GRC, had started her speech by addressing concerns regarding the humanitarian crisis in Palestine.

She then brought up the Ministry of Education's (MOE) Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) lesson on the Israel-Hamas conflict, which sparked online discussion and parliament debate in 2024.

MOE eventually revised the lesson to make it better scoped for students of different age groups and provided teachers delivering it with additional support.

Siti Alia questioned why parents were not asked for consent before their children were taught that lesson.

"I put forward this example to show how much it means to the average Singaporean to have their voices heard. After all, the elected officials are elected in order to be the voice of Singaporeans," she said.

"This is where I hope that myself and my colleagues from The Workers' Party can help. No issue brought up by a constituent will be too trivial or unimportant to be raised. We want healthy discourse to take place," she added.

She was addressing some 10,000 attendees at a field along Anchorvale Crescent on April 24, alongside 12 other WP election candidates.

While it was the party's first physical rally since 2015, the long absence did not dampen the enthusiasm of rally-goers, who began trudging into the muddy field nearly two hours before the first speaker took to the stage.

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This article's headline has been edited for clarity.

bhavya.rawat@asiaone.com

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