SINGAPORE - People's Action Party (PAP) incumbent Henry Kwek, 44, has won Kebun Baru SMC.
Mr Kwek got 62.97 per cent of the votes in the general election on Friday (July 10), compared with his Progress Singapore Party opponent Kumaran Pillai, 49, who got 37.03 per cent.
The ward returns as a single seat after nearly 30 years. It was folded into Ang Mo Kio GRC in 1991 and redrawn into Nee Soon GRC in 2015, with Mr Kwek in charge of it since then.
Kebun Baru has been a traditional PAP stronghold, consistently scoring above the national vote share in the last few elections.
In 2015, the PAP won 69.9 per cent of the national vote share. In 2011, the PAP won 60.1 per cent of the national vote share.
Two in five residents in the ward, which has 22,653 voters, are Pioneer and Merdeka Generation seniors. Forty per cent of them live in private estates, with the rest living in 63 public housing blocks.
Mr Kwek, a first-term MP, has prioritised the needs of the elderly in the ward and spoken up on behalf of seniors in Parliament since being elected in 2015.
This includes the building of seven barrier-free entrances at the upcoming Mayflower MRT station, as part of phase two of the Thomson-East Coast Line. Elderly befriending programmes, and spaces for them to gather have also been put in place.
Kebun Baru will be part of the Ang Mo Kio Town Council, along with Yio Chu Kang SMC, which was won by the PAP's Yip Hon Weng.
In a message posted on his official Facebook page, Mr Kwek said: "I would like to thank the voters for giving my team and I a mandate to bring Kebun Baru forward. The elections may have ended, but the real work begins now.
"The top of my agenda both nationally and locally are your jobs and livelihoods as well as social assistance programmes for those in need.
"To the young men and women of Kebun Baru, I would like to say that you are the future of Singapore and my door is always open to you.
"Now, the road ahead of us is a challenging one, but I am confident that we can emerge stronger."
During the campaign, Mr Kwek, the executive director of an investment, trading and management consulting company, pledged to transform the ward into the most dementia-friendly community in Singapore. He also promised to expand the job counselling centre and networking opportunities to help residents cope with the impact of Covid-19.
His opponent Mr Pillai, who runs a consultancy to develop start-ups, pledged to help those who have fallen through the cracks, and to be an alternative voice in Parliament to weigh in on national issues.
He also focused on local issues during his campaign and said that not enough has been done to resolve residents' problems, such as the lack of elderly-friendly infrastructure and clogged drains in the estate.
At the Chongfu School counting centre, Mr Pillai told The Straits Times: "It was a principled fight. We will continue to work the ground. After 10 days of campaigning, I think the results are promising. We've looked at numbers by the different polling districts, some of them were as high as 48 per cent.
"Given more time, we could have worked the ground and convinced the voters that PSP has a more compelling manifesto and more to offer. We'll continue to work the ground the next five years."
Asked if there was anything he could have done better, he said: "Rain or shine, we were pounding the ground. Sembawang Hills is a hilly terrain and it's difficult to cover the ground, so I think we gave a very good fight.
"There were segments we couldn't cover but the campaign period was short, and before that was the circuit breaker, so we couldn't really connect with the ground. That was about six to eight weeks of circuit breaker.
"If we didn't have that, I think we could have done much better."
Asked if he would be looking to cover other grounds apart from Kebun Baru, he said it would depend on the direction from party leader Dr Tan Cheng Bock.
"If Doc wants me to cover different areas on top of Kebun Baru, I would be quite happy to look at that too."
