The race heats up: People walking past campaign posters of PAP and WP candidates in the East Coast GRC. — The Straits Times/ANN
The people of East Coast GRC are used to choice.
Daily, they have their pick of the “big three” hawker centres in Bedok – at blocks 16, 58 and 216 – and soignee Joo Chiat cafes, newly drawn into the GRC. Nightly, cocktails at modish bar Santai or supper in the noirish light of Simpang Bedok.
So, too, politically. Since 2006, the eastern idyll has flirted with the opposition in a near quarter-century game of “will they, won’t they” – always returning a credible result, but no prize, for the Workers’ Party (WP).
The Culture, Community and Youth Minister, Tong, has for a decade been the MP for the comfortable suburb, while the WP man has run in Joo Chiat since 2011. WP’s Yee Jenn Jong lost by a hair of 388 votes that year, when it was a single seat.
In Still Road, a banner of the WP’s East Coast GRC team has unfurled. But on the other side of the border, the lamp posts remain bare.
Nestled near the bustling Jurong industrial estate, Boon Lay is a blend of old and new – ageing HDB blocks sitting comfortably alongside newer housing projects that have sprung up in recent years.
Homemaker Sally Ng, 68, is confident that her incumbent MP, who leads the PAP team in West Coast GRC – National Development Minister Desmond Lee – will cruise to victory on Polling Day.
To her, the sheer turnout at every Meet-the-People Session says it all – residents trust him to get things done.
But while Ng takes comfort in the steady hand of her incumbent MP, a very different political energy is gathering momentum across the island in Punggol.
Ask around and you will find more voters swaying than casuarina trees in a monsoon storm in this GRC.
For one educator who declined to give her name, voting is anything but straightforward.
Having moved from Choa Chu Kang – where Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong was once her MP – to Punggol four years ago, the 32-year-old now finds herself torn between “a party with a proven track record and a party that offers hope”.
Another unspoken question lingers: Could there be a spillover effect from the WP’s surprise victory in Sengkang in 2020?
Several young residents from the adjacent Sengkang GRC have come to the One Punggol community hub, eager for a personal moment with the WP team.
Among them is a 24-year-old first-time voter queueing for a bowl of the famous Botak Cantonese Porridge while clutching a copy of Journey In Blue (2020) by the WP’s East Coast GRC candidate Yee, which he hopes to get signed.
On the ground, residents say the same thing again and again: Municipal issues matter, but so do national ones.
Thrust into one of the fiercest political spotlights of this election, they are only too aware of the weight their decision carries.
More than ever, their vote feels sacred. And they are taking it seriously. — The Straits Times/ANN
