GE2020: PAP to face off with Red Dot United in Jurong GRC

JURONG group representation constituency (GRC) will see a fight between the People's Action Party (PAP) and Singapore's newest political party, Red Dot United (RDU).

Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, 63, is again leading the PAP team, which comprises incumbents Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Trade and Industry and Foreign Affairs Tan Wu Meng, 45, and Rahayu Mahzam, 40, an associate director at law firm Heng, Leong & Srinivasan.

The new faces contesting are Shawn Huang, 37, a director for enterprise development at Temasek International, and 35-year-old Xie Yao Quan, head of redesign at Alexandra Hospital. Mr Xie was on Monday announced as the PAP's replacement for Ivan Lim, a general manager at Keppel Offshore and Marine who withdrew from the General Election (GE) after a slew of online allegations. He is also the cousin of Minister for Education Ong Ye Kung, Mr Ong confirmed to the media on Tuesday.

Jurong GRC was the best performing ward for the PAP in the 2015 GE, with the party securing 79.28 per cent of the votes against the now-disbanded Singaporeans First.

RDU's team includes Michelle Lee, 43, and Ravi Philemon, 52, who are former members of the Progress Singapore Party. The other candidates are political newcomers: theatre director Alec Tok Kim Yam, entrepreneur and author Liyana Dhamirah, and legal engineer Nicholas Tang.

The party released its 12-page charter on Sunday, outlining plans to push for changes in policies relating to housing, healthcare and employment.

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Speaking to the media at the nomination centre at Nan Hua High School, Ms Lee said that the group has arrived "against the odds" and had just the required number of assenters and deposit amount to file their nomination papers.

She later added that while very few would want to contest Jurong GRC, RDU thought long and hard about it and felt that the GE is about more than one person or party.

"It is about standing up to be counted and for the voices of the people of Jurong to be counted as well. We cannot shy away from a battle just because it will be a tough one."

At the close of Nomination Day proceedings, Mr Tharman said that the PAP team is "very thankful" that it has a contest in Jurong. He complimented Minister for Social and Family Development Desmond Lee, who has moved to the West Coast GRC team to contest against Tan Cheng Bock's Progress Singapore Party, and Ang Wei Neng for their efforts over the past 10 years.

Asked whether certain incidents over the past few days, such as the Ivan Lim saga, will affect the vote share, Mdm Rahayu said: "I think we have to be realistic. A lot of things happen in an election and events like these will clearly cause some erosion of faith in our team. But what we hope is that residents will also give us an opportunity and also look at all the efforts that we have done."

She also said that Mr Xie was "really an easy choice" for the team.

For Nomination Day developments and more on Singapore GE2020, go to bt.sg/ge2020