Let’s face it: Voting in your constituency is important, but sometimes, your eyes is on another constituency.
One that has more action, because your area might be so well-taken care of, you hope Singapore Pools can allow you to bet who’s the winner.
And in this year’s election, many people’s eyes are on West Coast GRC.
Why, you ask.
One name.
Dr Tan Cheng Bock
If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Dr Tan, who’s 80 this year, has stood for the 2011 presidential election and lost by a slight margin of 0.35% to Tony Tan.
Yes, it’s that close.
And the good doctor was once from the increment Government, PAP, and was the Member of Parliament for them in the then Ayer Rajah SMC from 1980 to 2006.
He then retired from politics in 2006, and the SMC was absorbed into a GRC, West Coast GRC.
Back then, he was so popular, he got 88% of the votes in his last GE in 2001, getting 15,024 votes out of 17,420 votes. His opponent even lost the deposit, as one needs to garner at least 12.5% of the votes to get back the deposit.
Dr Tan did a Dr Mahathir a few years back—he set up his own party, the Progress Singapore Party (PSP), which is now an opposition party.
So now that he’s back in politics, he’d be back in the battleground that he’s familiar with, of course: West Coast GRC.
However, do note that back then, Ayer Rajah SMC has about 20,000 voters—now, West Coast GRC, which has 4 MPs instead of 1, has over 90K people turning up to vote in the last election.
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But still, you get the gist: the doctor, whom some old folks like to address as Ama Keng due to the medical clinic he named in Jurong West, has become the opposition to go head on with the party he used to be in.
Which is why it created a hoo-ha when another party decided to contest in the same area as well:
When another opposition party comes in, it might dilute the votes PSP might get—just like how he had lost the presidential election because there were 2 other “opposition” candidates.
But this is going to change.
Reform Party Not Contesting in West Coast
This early morning, Reform Party, the party that has expressed interest to contest in West Coast GRC, said in a Facebook post that they would not be contesting in the GRC.
This is after they’ve engaged “in long talks with Dr Tan Cheng Bock and his assistant SG Leong Mun Wai.”
And according to Reform Party, PSP will therefore be contesting in “far fewer seats than originally anticipated and have offered to withdraw from various grounds they were originally eyeing, in return for Reform Party ceding West Coast (GRC).”
Here’s their post:
In other words, yes, if no other opposition party steps in, it’d be a fight between Dr Tan’s new party vs Dr Tan’s old party.
NTUC FairPrice got sell Oreo popcorn leh. Anyone up for it?