GE2015: PAP clinches 60.7% of votes for East Coast GRC

Kalpana Rashiwala
Published Fri, Sep 11, 2015 · 06:26 PM
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[SINGAPORE] It was expected to be one of the closest contests in this general election. But in the end, People's Action Party (PAP) clinched 60.73 per cent of votes in the four-member East Coast Group Representation Constituency (GRC), head and shoulders above the 39.27 per cent that went to the Workers' Party (WP).

The PAP's winning margin marks an improvement over the party's 54.83 per cent of vote share against WP for East Coast GRC in the 2011 General Election. That score made it the worst-performing GRC that won in that election.

In the 2006 general election, PAP had garnered 63.86 per cent of votes for the GRC.

In the latest general election, the electoral boundaries of the East Coast GRC were redrawn with the Fengshan ward carved out.

A total of 90,528 valid votes were cast on Friday for East Coast GRC, of which 54,981 went to PAP.

The experienced defending team from the PAP for East Coast GRC was led by Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say. A former managing director of the Economic Development Board, Mr Lim entered politics and joined the labour movement in 1996. On May 4 this year, he stepped down from the National Trades Union Congress, where he was secretary-general, and also gave up his appointment as Minister in the Prime Minister's Office, to assume the Manpower Minister portfolio.

The other members of the PAP team for East Coast GRC are: Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry and National Development Lee Yi Shyan; Minister of State for National Development and Defence Mohamad Maliki Osman; and two-term backbencher Jessica Tan.

The opposing WP team was headed by Gerald Giam, a Non-Constituency Member of Parliament in the previous parliament and who also contested the East Coast GRC in the 2011 general election. The other members of the WP team are first-time candidates: sociologist Daniel Goh; research and consultancy firm CEO Leon Perera; and former librarian Mohamed Fairoz Shariff. Mr Giam is an IT solutions architect. At a rally speech on Wednesday night, Workers' Party chief Low Thia Khiang credited the East Coast candidates as the main architects behind his party's general election manifesto.

Read more about GE2015 here.

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