DPM Gan Kim Yong (left) will lead the PAP against a WP team helmed by senior counsel Harpreet Singh (right) for the new Punggol GRC. - ST
SINGAPORE: Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong, in a surprise move, will lead the PAP against a WP team helmed by senior counsel Harpreet Singh for the new Punggol GRC.
Ending days of speculation leading up to Nomination Day on Wednesday (April 23), Gan, 66, who is also Minister for Trade and Industry, was confirmed as the anchor minister of the four-member PAP team.
Gan, who was originally expected to lead the PAP team in Chua Chu Kang, now joins incumbents Senior Minister of State Janil Puthucheary, 52, Minister of State for Home Affairs and Social and Family Development Sun Xueling, 45, and National Trades Union Congress assistant secretary-general Yeo Wan Ling, 48.
The switcheroo was one of a series of surprises on April 23, which saw Manpower Minister Tan See Leng move from Marine Parade GRC to Chua Chu Kang GRC, taking over from Gan.
Apart from WP “star catch” Harpreet Singh, 59, the other members of WP’s Punggol slate is made up of new faces Alexis Dang, senior director of publisher business development at an advertising tech firm, 39, Siti Alia Abdul Rahim Mattar, legal counsel, 43 and Jackson Au, senior manager of corporate affairs and marketing with the London Stock Exchange Group, 35.
The WP pulled off a surprise by diverting its big names to Punggol and Tampines instead of Marine Parade, contrary to what some had expected.
The closely-guarded slates for both parties were made known at the nomination centre in Yusof Ishak Secondary School in Punggol.
A showdown is expected as the parties compete over the freshly-carved Punggol constituency, where more than half of its more than 120,000 voters are estimated to be working adults between 21 and 45.
These figures are based on ST’s analysis using Department of Statistics data dated June 2024.
These millennial and Gen Z voters are over-represented in the GRC by a wide margin of over 10 percentage points.
Punggol West SMC is the only part of Punggol that the WP had contested before. It took 39.02 per cent of the vote there in GE2020 against Sun.
In all, Punggol GRC combines 96,825 voters from the former Pasir-Ris-Punggol GRC, with 26,732 voters from the single-member Punggol West constituency for a total of 123,557 voters.
Pasir Ris-Changi GRC
Meanwhile, the Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA) will go up against the PAP for the newly created Pasir Ris-Changi-GRC.
The party’s chairman Desmond Lim, 52, announced that he will lead a team made up of its secretary-general Abu Mohamed, 74, and Harminder Pal Singh, 54, the party’s communications lead, who was pushed in with them on a wheelchair.
Formed in 2001, SDA comprises two political parties, the Singapore Justice Party and PKMS, although Lim hinted at a walkabout that a “surprise” third party had joined the group.
This was revealed to be restaurant owner Chia Yun Kai, 32, who announced previously that he will found his own party – Most Valuable Party – to contest East Coast.
They will face the PAP’s line-up led by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and Leader of the House Indranee Rajah, 62.
In another surprise move two days before Nomination Day, Indranee had announced that she would lead the slate, leaving Tanjong Pagar GRC, where she has contested in since her political debut in 2001.
Her team comprises Senior Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Desmond Tan, 55, Sharael Taha,44, and political newbie Valerie Lee Nai Yi, 39, Sembcorp’s head of corporate affairs for Singapore and South-East Asia.
In 2020, PAP won the then five-member Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC with 64.16 per cent of the vote, while SDA achieved second place with 23.67 per cent of votes.
Sengkang GRC
The WP Sengkang team comprising incumbent MPs He Ting Ru, 41, Associate Professor Jamus Lim, 49, Louis Chua, 37, and new face Abdul Muhaimin Abdul Malik, 36, successfully confirmed their candidacy.
The team’s only new face, Muhaimin, is a senior property manager at Aljunied-Hougang Town Council.
He has been active in the Compassvale ward of Sengkang GRC since 2023, organising home visits, Meet-the-People Sessions and community outreach activities.
They will go up against the PAP’s team of three new faces led by former Senior Minister of State for Transport and Health Lam Pin Min, the only candidate retained from the ruling party’s Sengkang slate in the 2020 election.
The new faces are Theodora Lai, 39, co-founder of deep tech venture capital firm Moringa Ventures; Associate Professor Elmie Nekmat, 43, who teaches communications and new media at the National University of Singapore; and Bernadette Giam, 38, the director of Creative Eateries, a local food and beverage company.
They arrived to whistles, cheers and applause from dozens of PAP supporters, chanting “Sengkang! Sengkang!”
In the 2020 GE, a team of political newcomers comprising Ms He, Mr Chua, Prof Lim and Ms Raeesah Khan won 52.12 per cent of the vote, beating the PAP’s line-up that had three political office holders and one newcomer Raymond Lye, a lawyer.
While Sengkang GRC has not grown as significantly as other places, the number of electors in Sengkang has become the largest four-member constituency with 126,641 voters in February 2025.
This is largely due to new public housing projects – such as the 2,500-unit Rivervale Shores – and new condominium developments.
About 30 per cent of residents in Sengkang are working adults aged between 26 and 45, and 28 per cent are between 46 and 65. - The Straits Times/ANN
