PUBLISHED ONJune 30, 2020 4:58 PMByBryan LimWith DPM Heng Swee Keat's surprise move to East Coast GRC and Lee Hsien Yang's appearance near a nomination centre, there was plenty that went down during GE2020's Nomination Day and it was just the beginning.
In fact, Terence Soon, who's part of Progress Singapore Party's (PSP) team contesting in Tanjong Pagar GRC, admitted that Lee's appearance definitely caused some speculation internally.
He said during a Facebook Live event last night (June 30): "To start off, I think quite a number of us on the team were really wondering if Lee Hsien Yang was going to run. None of us actually knew what was happening."
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They only got clarity when Lee parted ways after walking them to the nomination centre at Bendemeer Primary School.
Soon also dished on a minor hiccup with their application. Aside from the absence of an assentor (don't worry, they had backups), a duplicate copy of their form was incomplete.
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"One of the lines, there was something missing. We happened to miss out a small field on it. That was a duplicate copy, there's always an original. We submitted both and what came back was that the duplicate copy, one of the fields was empty," he said.
He revealed that during the 30-minute period (from 12pm to 12.30pm) where parties could raise objections about each other's forms, the People's Action Party (PAP) didn't do so.
Teammate Michael Chua added: "I would like to thank the Tanjong Pagar team from PAP who graciously just informed us that there was a discrepancy in the duplicate form and notified us of this issue. Therefore, we were able to verify that the original had the fields filled in."
Because of that, Chua revealed, PAP's Indranee Rajah, who is part of the incumbent team for Tanjong Pagar GRC, didn't feel like it was necessary to raise a formal objection.
Indranee explained her decision yesterday to The Straits Times and said: "If we are returned, we want to be returned because our voters have said they've given us the right and the privilege to return."
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It was also reported that Chua could have found fault with PAP's forms as one of their candidates, Eric Chua, had his occupation listed as "retired SCDF officer".
Chua told the newspaper: "That is not an occupation. So I think in that spirit of competition, we really want to give Singapore a choice of two very good teams, and for them to cast a vote for the future. It's not about paperwork, and these very minor technicalities."
PSP also caused quite the stir when media reported that the team fielded at Nee Soon GRC had pulled out. However, that wasn't the case, according to candidate Damien Tay.
Tay explained that being "first-timers", the team was "new" to the paperwork. In addition, one of their assenters didn't turn up as well.
He recounted: "On top of that, I think there was a slight spelling error so we had to go to and fro. Basically, I saw the clock ticking down [but] the forms all went through. Everything was all right, they checked everything."
bryanlim@asiaone.com