GE2020: PAP’s Desmond Lee joins West Coast GRC team in fight against PSP

SINGAPORE — People’s Action Party’s Desmond Lee, 43, will run as a candidate in West Coast Group Representation Constituency (GRC), moving from his previous seat in Jurong GRC.

His team also includes Mr S Iswaran, 58; Ms Foo Mee Har, 54; Mr Ang Wei Neng, 53; and new candidate Rachel Ong, 47.

They filed their nomination papers at Nan Hua High School on Tuesday (June 30), which was the nomination centre for both West Coast and Jurong GRCs. 

Mr Lee replaces former trade and industry minister Lim Hng Kiang, 66, who has retired from politics after 29 years. 

Mr Lee had been a Member of Parliament (MP) for Jurong GRC since 2011. There has been some speculation over his move to another GRC in the lead-up to Nomination Day.

On Monday, the PAP leader of the Jurong GRC team, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, had announced a five-member slate which did not include Mr Lee. 

Mr Iswaran is the current leader of the PAP team in West Coast GRC, which he has served since he entered politics in 1997. Ms Foo has also served two terms as MP in West Coast GRC while Mr Ang had been an MP in Jurong GRC since 2011 before making the switch together with Mr Lee this time round. 

The PAP team will come up against the Progress Singapore Party’s secretary-general Tan Cheng Bock, 80; Mr Leong Mun Wai, 60; Ms Hazel Poa, 50; Mr Nadarajah Loganathan, 57; and Mr Jeffrey Khoo, 51.

Dr Tan was a six-term PAP MP for Ayer Rajah for 26 years from 1980 to 2006. The single member constituency was merged with West Coast GRC in 2006.   

During the 2015 contest, the PAP team, consisting of Mr Iswaran, Ms Foo, Mr Lim and Mr Patrick Tay, secured 78.57 per cent of the vote against a Reform Party team led by its chief Kenneth Jeyaretnam, Mr Andy Zhu, Ms Noraini Yunus and Mr Darren Soh.

When asked by reporters whether the fielding of Dr Tan was a factor in having two ministers stand in West Coast GRC, Mr Iswaran said that the constituency always had two political office holders since GE2011. 

“That was the situation even when we moved from five-man GRC to a four-person GRC. And now, we have enlarged to a five-person GRC,” said Mr Iswaran. 

“One should look at it for what it is, which is basically that we are putting forward a strong team — a team that can deliver on the ground and a team that can work with the Government to take care of the needs of our residents,” he said. 

When the same question was posed to the PSP team during a media doorstop after filing its nomination papers, Dr Tan said “it’s that way” in politics. 

“I’m not going to question why they did that. But if you’re trying to say that I’m somebody quite strong, so they’re trying to put all their heavyweights up in West Coast, well, that’s good,” he added. 

For Mr Lee, even though he has been moved from the Jurong Spring ward in Jurong GRC to the Boon Lay ward in West Coast GRC, he said the two communities can be seen as one. 

The residents do not regard the electoral boundary line along Corporation Road “as a border of any form” and the demographics among the populations of these two wards are very similar, he added.