Vincent Wijeysingha

Image by Wikipedia user ‘Jacklee’. Click to go to source.

Vincent Wijeysingha became Singapore’s first openly gay politician, when he came out on his Facebook last Friday the 28th. I read this on Yahoo! News Singapore the following day. According to the article by Shah Salimat, Vincent wrote:

“…yes, I am going to Pink Dot tomorrow. And yes, I am gay.”

Writing about him here, I want to include the link to that declaration, but I can’t seem to find it. Anyway, the link to his Facebook is here.

Oh wow, we now have an openly gay politician. How amazing is that? This is huge. Needless to say (but saying it anyway), it is incredibly brave of him to do so. He has so much to lose, so much more hardship and obstacles now to face as a consequence, but he did it anyway. Major balls. I hope his family, friends, colleagues, and everyone else who know him personally especially, all rally round him and give him further strength and motivation.

To be honest I don’t really follow politics. Before this, if you had shown me a picture of him, I would recognize him as one of the opposition guys running in the last election in 2011, but I wouldn’t remember his name. Now, yeah, I even know how to spell it. And even marvel that his name has ‘singha‘ in the end. That means ‘lion‘, as in part of ‘lion city‘, ‘Singapura‘, the very name of the country he loves and serves! Too cool, right?

And to add to that, I even start to look more closely at him and think… hmmm, he’s actually goodlooking. (The above picture doesn’t do him justice. He has a sweet attractive smile in some of the other pictures I saw.) Yes, I’m superficial like that sometimes. *shrugs*

Some stuff I learnt about him from Wiki and his Facebook:

• Dr. Vincent Wijeysingha (born 1970) is a politician and civil activist from Singapore.
• He studied at Victoria School in Singapore, then headed to the United Kingdom and studied at the University of Lincoln, earning his PhD in social policy at the University of Sheffield. He lived in England for almost 16 years before moving back to Singapore.
• He is currently the Treasurer of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) and a member of its Central Executive Committee. He also heads its Communications Unit.
• Dr Wijeysingha has stated that he joined the SDP because he realised he had a responsibility as a Singaporean to work for change, saying that: “I cannot look the other way as more and more people experience the adverse effects of current PAP policies.”^[*]
• He was previously Executive Director of Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), a non-government organization advocating the rights of low-waged migrant workers.
• He also lectures and publishes scholarly papers on social work.
• Currently he teaches social work at SIM University.

Related articles:

• Time Magazine – With law against him, Singapore politician says he’s gay. (2 July 2013)
• The Washington Post – 1st openly gay politician in Singapore says law criminalizing homosexuality will be history (2 July 2013)
• New Nation (satire site) – Singaporeans wouldn’t have guessed Vincent Wijeysingha’s gay. (30 June 2013)
• The New Paper – Is S’pore ready for a gay MP? (26 April 2011)

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