West Coast GRC renamed West Coast-Jurong West GRC, will absorb parts of Jurong

Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox

Some estates in Taman Jurong will become part of the new West Coast-Jurong West GRC.

Some estates in Taman Jurong will become part of the new West Coast-Jurong West GRC.

ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG

Follow topic:

SINGAPORE – West Coast GRC will absorb some estates from Jurong GRC and be renamed West Coast-Jurong West GRC in the coming general election.

It will also cede estates in HarbourFront and Sentosa to Radin Mas SMC, and areas of Dover and Telok Blangah to Tanjong Pagar GRC, the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) said in a report released on March 11.

The new West Coast-Jurong West GRC will remain a five-member one and will have 158,581 voters, it said.

This is up from the 144,516 voters the current group representation constituency had at the 2020 General Election, when it saw that election’s closest contest.

The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) won the GRC with 51.69 per cent of the vote against the newly founded Progress Singapore Party (PSP), led by Dr Tan Cheng Bock, a former PAP stalwart.

The areas the new GRC will absorb include Taman Jurong, a ward held by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam for more than 20 years before he resigned in 2023 to contest the presidential election.

The report outlining the changes was received by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on March 7 and accepted by the Government to be implemented at the next general election, which must be held by November 2025.

It gave reasons for the changes to West Coast GRC, which are part of a cascade triggered by the growth of new estates in Tengah and Bukit Batok West – areas to the north of the constituency’s current boundaries.

The growth in population in these areas means they cannot remain within their current boundaries as the committee was tasked to keep the ratio of voters to MPs largely unchanged from the previous election, when the figure was 28,510 to one.

It therefore recommended redrawing several constituencies in the area to create, among others, the new Jurong East-Bukit Batok GRC.

To maintain this new GRC as a five-member one, the committee recommended carving out some of Jurong GRC’s estates to form the new Jurong Central SMC, as well as absorbing some of its estates in Jurong West and Taman Jurong into West Coast-Jurong West GRC.

To also retain the new West Coast-Jurong West as a five-member GRC after absorbing these areas, the committee recommended carving out the current GRC’s easternmost polling district, comprising estates in HarbourFront and Sentosa, and placing it under Radin Mas SMC.

It also recommended moving polling districts in Dover and Telok Blangah estates into the adjacent Tanjong Pagar GRC.

The areas that the new West Coast-Jurong West GRC will absorb from the current Jurong GRC are largely under the Taman Jurong ward but also include parts of Jurong Spring. Both are represented by Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Education and Finance Shawn Huang.

Mr Huang took over as Taman Jurong’s MP in 2023 after Mr Tharman resigned in July that year.

Jurong GRC is seen as a PAP stronghold and has been one of the ruling party’s best-performing constituencies, securing 79.29 per cent of the vote in GE2015 and 74.61 per cent in GE2020.

Taman Jurong residents The Straits Times spoke to said they were largely ambivalent about joining the new GRC, but expressed continued support for Mr Tharman and his successor, Mr Huang.

Retired driver Kamsani Mohamadin, 75, who has lived in Jurong since the 1970s, said Mr Tharman’s leadership was a large factor in his vote for the PAP over the last few elections – a vote which is unlikely to change even after the MP’s departure, he added.

“For the PAP, we already know, see and feel how they do their work,” he said, adding that Mr Tharman and Mr Huang have both shown care to residents regardless of their ethnicity – a trait Mr Kamsani values.

Educator Hannah Han 33, who has lived in Taman Jurong since she was in secondary school, said she voted for Mr Tharman in the last election because of his relationship with her family, including seeing him in the market and at house visits.

She said: “Mr Huang is quite new and we have not yet built that relationship.”

The estates the current West Coast GRC will lose to Radin Mas and Tanjong Pagar are largely under the Telok Blangah ward, represented by first-term MP Rachel Ong.

The new West Coast-Jurong West GRC will likely be contested again by the PSP, with Dr Tan, 84, possibly remaining on the slate.

He told the media at a walkabout in February that the party expects West Coast GRC’s boundaries to change before the polls, but he said the PSP will contest in the area regardless.

“You are a politician, you fight... I am not making excuses – however West Coast is going to be cut, we will be there,” he said then.

Members of its previous slate, including Non-Constituency MPs Leong Mun Wai and Hazel Poa, as well as new faces, have been seen walking the area in the lead-up to the election.

The PAP team has, since the last election, lost its West Coast GRC anchor S. Iswaran, who resigned in January 2024 following a corruption probe. The former transport minister

was later jailed.

The team’s other members have remained in place. They are National Development Minister Desmond Lee, Ms Foo Mee Har, Mr Ang Wei Neng and Ms Ong.

Iswaran’s successor in the GRC remains unclear, but new faces have been spotted in the area alongside sitting MPs.

They are trade unionist Natasha Choy; Ms Valerie Lee, Sembcorp’s head of corporate affairs for Singapore and South-east Asia; and entrepreneur Chua Wei-Shan.

Ms Chua was appointed acting branch chairman in Iswaran’s ward following his resignation, but the three women do not fulfil the GRC’s current ethnic requirements, where the minority seat has been allocated to the Indian community.

West Coast GRC was formed in 1997 out of the former Brickworks GRC and several surrounding areas. Over the years, it has seen some changes, such as the carving out of Pioneer SMC in 2011.

  • Ng Wei Kai is a journalist at The Straits Times, where he covers politics. He writes 

    Unpacked, a weekly newsletter

     on Singapore politics and policy. 

See more on