GE2025: Danger of ‘inbreeding’ in PAP’s candidate selection process, says PSP’s Tan Cheng Bock
All 13 Progress Singapore Party candidates take to the stage at the party’s first physical rally
[SINGAPORE] The People’s Action Party’s (PAP) tendency to draw many of its candidates from the civil service risks leading to “group-thinking” and “inbreeding”, said Progress Singapore Party (PSP) chairman Tan Cheng Bock on Thursday (Apr 24).
“This is dangerous – there will be group-thinking,” he said. “To me, it is inbreeding, and when there’s inbreeding, there is no way you can change policies within that system.”
That is why voters should support the opposition, said the veteran politician who is leading a five-member slate to contest the newly redrawn West Coast-Jurong West GRC – a rematch of his GE2020 bid against the PAP.
He was speaking at PSP’s first physical rally, held at Catholic High School, on the second day of campaigning. While the party contested in the 2020 General Election (GE), Covid-19 restrictions then meant physical rallies could not be held.
PSP is fielding 13 candidates across six constituencies in GE2025. Dr Tan, who turns 85 on Saturday, has previously said this will be his final election.
In his 14-minute address, he also pushed back against assertions that the PSP is a “racist party”.
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The party had been “fearless” in raising racially sensitive issues such as the Singapore-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), Dr Tan said, but only because such matters affect the “well-being and livelihood of every Singaporean”.
All 13 PSP candidates spoke at Thursday’s rally.
Among them was secretary-general Leong Mun Wai, who served as a Non-constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) in the 14th Parliament.
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In GE2020, a PSP team led by Dr Tan – including Leong and fellow NCMP Hazel Poa – secured 48.32 per cent of the vote in West Coast GRC, the narrowest margin of victory for the PAP in that election.
The ongoing contest in West Coast-Jurong West GRC will pit the two parties against each other once more.
Delivering the night’s longest speech at 19 minutes, Leong said the PAP’s fourth-generation leadership has “lost its way”.
“On the governance front, we can see a general decline in the standards, in accountability, competence and ethics in recent years,” he said.
He pointed to incidents such as the police use of TraceTogether data in 2020, the disclosure of NRIC numbers on the Bizfile portal, the SimplyGo issue, and last year’s six-day East-West Line train disruption.
In her 13-minute speech, Poa criticised the election’s first-past-the-post system and asked whether the Group Representation Constituency model was meant to “just ensure multi-racial politics” or to “entrench” the ruling party’s dominance.
“At the last GE in 2020, (the) PAP won 60 per cent of the votes, but that translated into 90 per cent of the elected seats,” she noted.
In that election, the PAP secured 61.24 per cent of the popular vote and won 83 out of 93 parliamentary seats.
The PAP’s resulting super-majority allows it to amend the Constitution “whenever they want and however they want”, she added.
As an example, she cited the constitutional amendment that led to the 2017 Presidential Election (PE) being reserved for Malay candidates.
Dr Tan, who narrowly lost to Tony Tan in PE2011, was unable to contest again in 2017 – prompting some netizens to dub him “Dr Tan Cheng Blocked”, Poa said.
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