Singapore GE2020: West Coast GRC could see hottest fight in some time

West Coast GRC, which hugs the south-western waterfront of the island, is set to experience some ripples this election.

With the latest electoral boundaries review, the constituency - which stretches from Tuas to Sentosa - will go from having four members to five, taking in almost 50,000 more voters.

The constituency is held by the People's Action Party team led by Minister for Communications and Information S. Iswaran, 58. It is expected to undergo key changes, with long-time anchor and former minister Lim Hng Kiang, 66, set to step down, along with the addition of one new member.

This time round, Mr Iswaran, who has served in the constituency since 1997, will anchor the PAP team in the GRC.

He has been especially busy in recent months overseeing the country's digitalisation push, made all the more critical in the face of the Covid-19 crisis, with more and more business, school and other activities shifting online.

A showdown is looming in the group representation constituency though, with the return of former PAP MP Tan Cheng Bock, this time on the other side of the political divide.

Dr Tan, 80, now the secretary-general of the Progress Singapore Party (PSP), will be leading its A team to contest in the constituency, which has his former Ayer Rajah stronghold within it.

On Dr Tan's challenge, political observer Felix Tan, an associate lecturer at SIM Global Education, says: "We'll see if he still garners that support from the constituency. It's more about the personality and not so much about a big issue.

"I don't see any big issues playing up, like in Aljunied GRC with the Workers' Party," he adds, referring to the serious questions raised about the WP's management of the town council's financial affairs, and granting of contracts to supporters, which will no doubt feature in the contest for that ward.

Dr Tan was MP for Ayer Rajah from 1980 until 2006. In his last election in 2001, he won 88 per cent of the vote in his constituency against the Democratic Progressive Party's Tan Lead Shake - the highest margin of victory in that contest.

He also emerged a close second to Dr Tony Tan in the 2011 Presidential Election.

In a PSP virtual outreach session last month, the PSP chief pointed out that during his 26-year stint as Ayer Rajah MP, he also looked after surrounding constituencies in his roles as chairman of Jurong East Town Council, then the Bukit Timah Community Development Council, and later West Coast-Ayer Rajah Town Council.

Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan of the Singapore Management University (SMU) notes that West Coast GRC has been a "very safe PAP seat" and has never been "seriously challenged" there.

"This time, arguably, the PSP presents a serious challenge to the PAP, and a real choice for voters there," says Prof Tan.

The West Coast GRC contest had seemed headed for a three-way fight - which typically favours the incumbent - until the Reform Party (RP) announced last Wednesday that it would not be contesting there.

Even so, the contest for the GRC looks set to be intense, given the PAP's strong showing there in recent elections, which the PSP is seeking to overturn to make its mark in its first outing at the polls.

Never known to take an electoral contest lightly, the PAP is believed to be considering moving Minister for Social and Family Development Desmond Lee, 43, who is currently in the PAP's Jurong GRC team, to join the West Coast slate.

Mr Lee, a key member of the PAP's fourth-generation leadership, was a special guest in two recent West Coast GRC constituency virtual dialogues.

Also in those dialogues were first-time candidate Rachel Ong Sin Yen, 47, the chief executive of consultancy firm Rohei, who serves as vice-chairman for the Telok Blangah Citizens Consultative Committee; and Jurong GRC member Ang Wei Neng, 53.

The trio, along with current West Coast GRC members, Mr Iswaran and Ms Foo Mee Har, 54, are expected to comprise the line-up for the five-man constituency.

On the opposition side, alongside Dr Tan will be PSP assistant secretary-general Leong Mun Wai, 60, founder of a venture capital firm; and vice-chairman Hazel Poa, 50, a former secretary-general of the National Solidarity Party which contested Chua Chu Kang GRC in 2011.

Joining them are Mr Jeffrey Khoo Poh Tiong, 51, Asia-Pacific chief marketing officer of global insurance and reinsurance broker Ed; and Mr Nadarajah Loganathan, 57, a retired senior Singapore Armed Forces officer and co-founder of a skills training firm.

"This time around, strong candidates are coming to the fore for the opposition parties. The PAP is facing a very tough challenge in almost every constituency," notes Dr Tan of SIM Global Education.

"So, for these constituencies, where you have a larger-than-life personality, PAP will want to put someone just as strong there."

After Dr Tan Cheng Bock left Ayer Rajah in 2006, the single seat was absorbed into West Coast GRC. It saw a walkover in the election that year, with the PAP's Arthur Fong, Cedric Foo, Ho Geok Choo, Lim Hng Kiang and S. Iswaran declared MPs on Nomination Day.

In 2011, an RP team led by secretary-general Kenneth Jeyaretnam and comprising Ms Ho Soak Harn, Mr Kumar Appavoo, Mr Low Chiak Huan and current chairman Andy Zhu, contested there.

They lost to a PAP team that swopped out Ms Ho Geok Choo for current National Development Minister Lawrence Wong, and secured 66.57 per cent of the 121,045 votes.

During the 2015 contest, the constituency was downsized to four members, with a total of 99,300 voters.

The PAP team, consisting of Mr Iswaran, Ms Foo, Mr Lim and Mr Patrick Tay, secured 78.57 per cent of the votes, against an RP team comprising party chief Jeyaretnam, Mr Zhu, Ms Noraini Yunus and Mr Darren Soh.

This time round, West Coast GRC is again bumped up to a five-man constituency, with the number of voters increased to 146,251.

Under the latest electoral boundaries review released in March, it took in parts of Chua Chu Kang GRC and Hong Kah North SMC. It currently surrounds Pioneer SMC completely.

"I don't think it's necessarily more difficult to capture the GRC, if they have strong candidates. A larger slate provides more diversity for voters, and both parties will have to make a more conscious effort to field people who are reliable," says Dr Tan of SIM Global Education.

While the PSP is contesting in eight other constituencies, it is banking its hopes on its A team to put in its best showing.

Even so, it will be no mean feat to unseat the PAP, given that this would call for a swing to the opposition of nearly 30 percentage points, from the PAP's showings in recent polls.

Notes SIM Global Education's Dr Tan: "There's a high chance that they can get, at the very least, an NCMP (Non-Constituency) seat. There's a strong team, with a strong influence."

He adds that the resolved three-cornered fight should boost PSP's chances.

This could see Dr Tan returning to Parliament as an NCMP, if his team ends up as the top-scoring party that does not win.

The election will see an increased quota of 12 NCMP seats up for grabs for opposition candidates who lose by the smallest margins.

Whether he would accept such a seat remains unknown.

In a Facebook post in 2011, Dr Tan had said that NCMPs are different from Nominated MPs - which he had strongly opposed when he was in the House on the PAP ticket - as they were "candidates who fought the GE and lost".

On the other hand, the NMPs did not stand for election and therefore have no accountability.

SMU's Prof Tan says that with the new additional voters in the five-man GRC, the electoral battle is "a little more difficult" for the PSP team, and they will have to run a broad-based campaign covering every demographic, paying attention to both municipal and national issues.

"You can't create a massive swing just by focusing on one group. I don't think there is one particular group that forms the majority of voters in West Coast GRC," he says.