PAP retains Tanjong Pagar GRC with 63% of the vote
Tanjong Pagar remained a People’s Action Party (PAP) stronghold as voters chose the team led by Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing, 50.
The PAP team won 63.13 per cent of the vote in the ward, which is casting ballots for only the second time since the GRC was formed in 1991.
Besides Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Indranee Rajah, 57, and Ms Joan Pereira, 53, the PAP’s team has two new faces in Mr Alvin Tan, 40, Linkedin’s Asia-Pacific head of public policy and economics, and public servant Eric Chua, 41.
The team beat Progress Singapore Party’s lineup of Mr Michael Chua, 55, a former military man who was an SAF merit scholar, lawyer Wendy Low, 43, technologist Harish Pillay Abas Kasmani, 60, and Singapore Airlines pilot Terence Soon, 29.
Resident Rosaline Goh said she believes the PAP team still has the best credentials out of all the parties.
“When you look at the world in general, I don’t understand why people are complaining about Singapore,” said the 66-year old, who is self-employed.
The PAP candidates campaigned on both municipal and national issues in their contest for the constituency.
Candidates spoke of plans to beautify the Tanjong Pagar town and of new social programmes to help seniors and youth in the area while Minister Chan actively defended the party’s position on free trade agreements, a lightning rod for criticism from opposition politicians.
He and Ms Indranee also rebutted the opposition’s calls to deny the PAP a blank cheque, by pointing to the Non-Constituency MP scheme, which provides for opposition party members to sit in Parliament and have the same voting rights as elected MPs.
The ward is most associated with founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, who helmed the area from 1955 until his death in 2015.
In the 2015 elections, the PAP team led by Mr Chan Chun Sing took 77.71 per cent of the vote, beating a Singaporeans First party team led by former presidential hopeful Tan Jee Say. – THE STRAITS TIMES
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