The Democratic Progressive Party (abbreviation: DPP) is an opposition political party in Singapore. History and political development From a splinter group from the Workers' Party, the party was founded by the former party's Assistant Secretary-General Seow Khee Leng on 16 March 1973, under the name of United Front. On 5 March 1982, the party was renamed to Singapore United Front, to avoid confusion with the name of another party, United People's Front. During the campaigning in the 1984 general election, SUF's chief Seow was sued by Lee Kuan Yew (who was then the Prime Minister of Singapore) alongside the members of People's Action Party for slandering defamatory remarks made at two rally speeches that Lee and his cabinet were guilty of corruption. Seow was ordered to pay Lee and the PAP S$250,000 worth of damages and costs each, and by 3 February 1989, Seow was made bankrupt after being unable to keep up with the payments for the damages owned from two separate but similar libel suits brought by PM Lee and the PAP government. In January 1988, the party merged with Workers' Party to contest the 1988 general election. SUF was temporarily defunct until in 1992, Seow and former WP members revived the party, and renamed it to its current name, Democratic Progressive Party. Former WP member Tan Soo Phuan and his son Lead Shake stood as candidates for the party in the 1997 and 2001 general elections, though they did not achieve much electoral success, both saw the candidates losing their electoral deposits for failing to garner the necessary threshold of 12.5% of the valid votes cast (Soo Phuan in the 1997 election in Chua Chu Kang SMC, and Lead Shake in the 2001 election in Ayer Rajah SMC). In July 2002, both father and son were subsequently expelled from the DPP, both for breaching party's orders during the 2001 elections without informing the party first (Soo Phuan did not inform his decision to contest MacPherson SMC, while Lead Shake contested Ayer Rajah instead of Joo Chiat SMC). After more than a decade of inactivity, in December 2012, Seow invited a group of former members of the Singapore People's Party (SPP) including Benjamin Pwee and Mohamad Hamim Bin Aliyas (SPP's founding member) to join and take over the leadership of the party. Pwee was appointed as the party's Acting Secretary-General in January 2013. At an Ordinary Party Congress