Tan Kin Lian says criticism over his ‘pretty girls’ Facebook posts part of smear campaign

Presidential candidate Tan Kin Lian, 75, once again defended his Facebook posts on “pretty girls” on Tuesday, after his successful nomination at the People’s Association headquarters.

He described recent criticism that he had objectified women in his online posts as a smear campaign orchestrated by his competitors for the presidency and the ruling People’s Action Party.

He said that nobody had expressed discomfort over his remarks in the 10 years that he had been putting up such posts.

On Tuesday morning, Mr Tan had put out a media statement that initially said the criticism over his Facebook posts were from an attack group “from a political party that is now backing my strongest opponent”, without providing more details.

The statement also said that should his “top opponent” be involved in the smear campaign, Mr Tan “would now consider him to be unfit to be the president of Singapore”.

Mr Tan subsequently amended his statement to remove these points.

Following the thank-you speeches by the presidential candidates, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam said he was glad that Mr Tan had withdrawn the suggestion that he was involved in any smear campaigns.

“It certainly goes against everything I represent, which I’ve stated repeatedly: the need to focus on candidates’ ability to contribute to Singapore, avoid smear campaigns of any sort,” said Mr Tharman, 66. “Clearly, I have nothing to do with it. But I’m very sure that no one backing me has anything to do with it either.”

Mr Tan, however, said he had been subject to smears for “more than 10 years”.

“These smears, of course, come from one political party,” said the former NTUC Income chief executive after his thank-you speech. “I say (to) that political party: You are in power. You want to ask people to unite. You want to ask people to trust the government. Is this the way to behave?”

Mr Tan had in recent days drawn flak for his occasional references on Facebook to “pretty girls”, “pretty joggers” and “pretty slim girls”. A TikTok video that compiled some of these posts has been seen more than 338,000 times since it was put up over the weekend. His past comments have also made the rounds on platforms such as Reddit.

His dismissal on Monday of criticisms over his posts drew a response from the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) that questioned whether the issuance of a certificate of eligibility for him to contest the election was tacit approval of behaviour that objectifies women.

The Presidential Election Committee said in a statement on Monday night that the issuance of a certificate to Mr Tan did not amount to an endorsement of his social media posts.

On Tuesday, Mr Tan said the posts had been put up over a period of 10 years, and had been viewed by more than 100,000 people with “no one” expressing any discomfort over his remarks.

“On this election, suddenly somebody... says ‘I feel uncomfortable’. But there are more than 100,000 people who watched the posts over 10 years. Why do you feel uncomfortable now?” he asked.

Mr Tan said it was “a concerted effort to smear” him.

Asked who he thought was behind such an effort, he said: “They are most likely my competitors.”

Mr Tan said he had spoken to Mr Tharman at the nomination centre, and that the former senior minister had assured him that he was not behind the criticism, nor would he allow such behaviour from his team.

“But of course, I’m not too sure whether he knows what somebody else (is) doing on his behalf,” said Mr Tan.

He acknowledged that he had described some women in his posts as pretty girls, but that there was nothing wrong with that.

“The pretty girls take the effort to dress up to be attractive, and when I say that they are quite attractive, most of them actually feel quite happy,” he said. “I don’t know why somebody would want to use that as a negative point.”

Mr Tan then said that the media had taken something “quite frivolous (and) made it into a big issue”.

Earlier in the morning, Mr Tan told The Straits Times at his home that he had become quite stressed in recent days because of criticisms over his social media activity, which he described as a “very malicious attack”.

“The media was part of it, my opponent in the political party is part of it. It’s very despicable,” he said.

Some who had turned up to support Mr Tan at the nomination centre said they saw nothing wrong with his social media posts.

People’s Power Party founder Goh Meng Seng, who was at the PA headquarters on Tuesday morning, said Mr Tan’s posts were simply about being candid and posting what he was feeling in the moment.

“What has Mr Tan done wrong?” he asked, adding that the furore over the posts was missing the bigger picture about Mr Tan’s candidacy.

On Monday night, Mr Tan reiterated that he saw nothing wrong with “appreciating pretty girls”.

“I’m sure the girls also appreciate good-looking men, so there’s nothing to be so upset about,” he said in a Facebook livestream where he took questions from supporters. “Maybe the people who are upset were not the pretty ones.”

At the interview following his thank-you speech on Tuesday, Mr Tan said he wanted to write to Aware to ask the gender equality group what exactly they found offensive about his posts, “but I got no way to reach out to them”.

“In case some other ladies, after reading this, think that they are uncomfortable, I want to apologise to them,” he said. “I have no (such) intention.”