Sylvia Lim Swee Lian (born 28 March 1965) is a Singaporean politician and lawyer who has served as the chairperson of the Workers' Party since 2003. Lim has been the Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) between 2006 and 2011. She has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Paya Lebar division of Aljunied Group Representation Constituency (GRC) since 2020.
Before entering politics, Lim had served in the Singapore Police Force (SPF) and worked as a law lecturer. One week after the 2011 general election, she announced that she would be resigning from her job after 12 years on account of what she anticipated to be an increased workload after her election to Parliament. During the same year, Lim also re-entered the legal sector. She is currently serving as counsel at Peter Low Chambers LLC.
Early life Lim attended CHIJ Our Lady of Good Counsel, CHIJ St. Joseph's Convent and National Junior College before graduating from the National University of Singapore in 1988 with a Bachelor of Laws degree with honours. She went on to complete a Master of Laws at the University College London in 1989, and was called to the bar in Singapore in 1991. She later completed an online master's degree in criminal justice from the Michigan State University in 2014.
During her undergraduate and postgraduate studies, Lim did volunteer work with the Spastic Children's Association, Salvation Army Home for the Aged and University College Hospital. She later did voluntary editorial work for the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme of the Law Society of Singapore.
Career
In 1991, Lim joined the Singapore Police Force for three years as a police inspector. She initially did investigation work at the Central Police Division Headquarters, and then became a staff officer under the Director of the Criminal Investigation Department.
Lim joined the law firm M/s Lim & Lim in 1994. She handled litigation work both civil and criminal cases in the High Court, Subordinate Courts and Juvenile Court between 1994 and 1998.
Lim joined Temasek Polytechnic in 1998 as a law lecturer. She was also the Manager of Professional Development and Manager of Continuing Education and Training at the polytechnic's School of Business. Her main areas of teaching and research were in civil and criminal procedure, criminal justice and private security. During her time at Temasek Polytechnic, Lim contributed to the volume on Criminal Procedure for Halsbury's Laws of Singapore (2003), a legal practitioners' reference series, and has also collected and published primary research on private security in Singapore.
In March 2006, Temasek Polytechnic modified its staffing policies to enable Lim to run as a candidate in the general election without having to resign her teaching position at the institution.
Political career Lim was cited as feeling "distressed" that opposition parties could contest only one-third of the parliamentary seats during the 2001 general election. Ten days after the election, she joined the Workers' Party (WP) and became the chairwoman of the party within 18 months in 2003.
2006 general election At the 2006 general election, Lim led the five-member Workers' Party team to contest the Aljunied Group Representation Constituency (Aljunied GRC), campaigning on the slogan "You have a Choice". Means testing in hospitals, as well as the James Gomez fiasco became hot button issues during the election campaign.
The WP team ultimately lost to the team from the governing People's Action Party (PAP) by 58,593 votes (43.9%) to 74,843 (56.1%). This was the highest percentage of the vote garnered by any losing opposition candidates in the election, and therefore meant that the WP was entitled to select one of its team members from Aljunied GRC to become a Non-constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP). The party chose Lim to become its NCMP.
NCMP term: 2006–2011 During her term in Parliament, Lim spoke out against ministers' salaries, and also against means testing in hospitals, which resulted in the PAP deferring a decision on this for a period of two years from 2006 to 2008. In addition, she also called for a reduction in the Goods and Services Tax, arguing that it was a regressive tax, and urged the government to do more to help retrenched workers.
In 2009, Parliament debated the Human Organ Transplant (Amendment) Bill which would permit an organ donor to receive a reasonable amount of payment as a reimbursement for medical checks, insurance and other medical expenses, and loss of income. Lim spoke of her worry that the bill might lead to a backdoor organ trading and profiteering.
In 2010, Lim mooted the idea that the proportion of each Primary 1 cohort that would be seeking a university education should be increased beyond the 30% by 2015 that the Government was planning. She noted that in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries in 2006 about 37% of each age cohort received a degree-level education, and that a sizeable number of Singaporean students who failed to gain entry into local universities had done well in reputable universities overseas. She also suggested giving concessionary fares to disabled individuals who make up 2% of the adult population under 60 years.
Lim expressed concerns about a proposed constitutional amendment introduced in April 2010Eventually enacted as the . that would allow magistrates to hear what are called "first mentions" through video conferencing. A first mention is a hearing that must be held within 48 hours of a person's arrest.The Singapore Constitution, Art. 9(4), now states: "Where a person is arrested and not released, he shall, without unreasonable delay, and in any case within 48 hours (excluding the time of any necessary journey), be produced before a Magistrate, in person or by way of video-conferencing link (or other similar technology) in accordance with law, and shall not be further detained in custody without the Magistrate's authority." Prior to 26 April 2010, the reference to video conferencing was not present in the provision. See also the , s. 68: "(1) No police officer shall detain in custody a person who has been arrested without a warrant for a longer period than under all the circumstances of the case is reasonable. (2) Such period shall not exceed 48 hours exclusive of the time necessary for the journey from the place of arrest to the Magistrate's Court." She felt it failed to adequately assure accused people that they were allowed to complain to magistrates about injuries they had sustained or acts of misfeasance against them by the authorities. In response, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs Wong Kan Seng assured MPs that processes would be in place to ensure that accused people are treated fairly. For example, during a video conference, an accused person would be alone in a room without police officers and able to see what was happening in the entire courtroom. Secondly, the screen used by the judge would be large enough to enable them to clearly see whether the accused was under duress. Finally, mistreated accused people could either complain to the police or to the judge when they were later present in court.
The following month, during parliamentary debates on major revisions to the Criminal Procedure Code,Enacted as the (now ). Lim suggested there was a need to improve pre-trial disclosure procedures and to ensure that victims of crimes received redress. Further, she expressed concerns over the leniency of community-based sentencing. The bill eventually incorporated several of her suggestions..
In 2011, Lim noted that the Compulsory Education Act. ensures that all children have the opportunity to receive an education. However, she expressed concern that processes for entry to schools for children with special needs were cumbersome. Furthermore, education for children with special needs was not subject to the same subsidies that students in mainstream schools had. She thus brought to the House's attention the fact that special needs children might have been unintentionally marginalized.. These concerns were supported by Penny Low, MP for Pasir Ris–Punggol GRC..
2011 general election
In the 2011 general election, Lim again contested in Aljunied GRC along with Pritam Singh, Chen Show Mao, Low Thia Khiang and Muhamad Faisal Manap. Lim and her party campaigned on the slogan "Towards a First World Parliament", which entailed maintaining checks and balances in Parliament to keep the ruling party accountable to the public, and for opposition parties to gain experience in policy formulation and constituency work. In her final election rally speech, Lim emphasised that contrary to the public's perception, there was "no glamour" in being an opposition MP, and that she was only "fighting to serve". In a televised political broadcast on cooling-off day, Lim warned the public that "there is a very real danger of an 87 to nil score ... and if that happens, Singapore's political landscape will suffer a tremendous setback from which we may never recover."
Lim was returned as an elected Member of Parliament for Aljunied GRC after her team won 54.72% of the votes (inclusive of overseas votes), the first time that an opposition party won a GRC since the system's introduction on 1 June 1988. In addition, the defeat of the incumbent PAP team marked the first time in Singapore's electoral history that a serving cabinet minister lost their seat.
After the election, she was assigned to look after the Serangoon ward and appointed chairperson of the combined Aljunied–Hougang Town Council. Lim's victory also made her the first female opposition MP in Singapore's post-independence history.
First term: 2011 – 2015 Gross National Happiness In her maiden speech as an opposition MP in October 2011, Lim urged the government to adopt a more holistic approach in assessing the well-being of Singaporeans, which included using Gross National Happiness (GNH) as an indicator apart from conventional indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Lim further noted in her speech that Singapore was a co-sponsor of Bhutan's resolution in the United Nations entitled Happiness: Towards a holistic approach to development. Lim's speech drew swift rebuttals from MPs of the ruling People's Action Party, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong who suggested later in 2014 that it was impractical "to switch to a different metric – from GDP to GNH". Lim replied that "the search for alternative indicators other than GDP is highly relevant ... GNH is not merely about measuring an emotion. It is about measuring societal progress in a holistic way".
Woffles Wu case In 2012, Lim engaged in a heated debate with Law Minister K Shanmugam where she questioned if the judgement published by the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) with regards to the Woffles Wu speeding case had addressed public concerns on the equitability of Singapore's legal system. Wu was fined S$1,000 in June 2012 under section 81(3) of the Road Traffic Act. Lim questioned why a custodial sentence was not imposed, noting that "aggravating factors" such as Wu abetting someone to provide false information to the police, and that he had committed more than one offence over a prolonged period would have warranted a harsher sentence. Shanmugam insisted that the treatment of the law applied in Wu's case was in line with prior cases of a similar nature, and challenged Lim repeatedly to name "a single case" in which a custodial sentence was imposed on cases with such a nature.