SINGAPORE – Opposition Progress Singapore Party founder and chairman Tan Cheng Bock has indicated that he intends to contest the next general election.
When asked after a walkabout in Clementi on Feb 23 if he will stand in the election due by November, Dr Tan, 84, said: “As long as I am able and I’m still relevant, I will be around.”
Asked again if he will be at the nomination centre before the election, he stopped short of confirming his candidacy but said: “That has to be the natural conclusion, right?
“I think so long as I’m relevant, and I think the country needs people, and I feel that I can contribute to the country, I cannot shirk that duty.”
Dr Tan added that the party expects West Coast GRC’s boundaries to change before the polls, but he said the party will contest in the area regardless.
“You are a politician, you fight… I am not making excuses – however West Coast is going to be cut, we will be there,” he said.
He was also asked why the PSP was walking about in Clementi, which is in the neighbouring Jurong GRC.
Dr Tan said the party wants to have a feel of not just what West Coast residents are thinking, but what other Singaporeans are thinking, too.
He said: “West Coast is too big... So we have many, many neighbours. We do not know what’s going to happen after the redrawing (of the electoral boundaries). We could be part of them and they could be part of us.”
When asked about his health, Dr Tan said: “Well, look at me. I can still talk to you. I can still answer questions.”
He added: “Every year I go for a medical. So my last medical was okay. I had a bad spell, which is quite normal for my age and I regard it as normal.”While Dr Tan did not specify what this bad spell was, he had precautionary surgery on a lung to remove a lesion in 2022.
Dr Tan, who will be 85 in April, led the party’s West Coast GRC slate in GE2020.
The constituency saw the closest fight in that election, with the PSP earning 48.31 per cent of the vote to the ruling People’s Action Party’s 51.69 per cent, and it is expected to be hotly contested again in 2025.
Dr Tan – a former PAP stalwart who was MP for Ayer Rajah from 1980 to 2006 – ran alongside Mr Leong Mun Wai, Ms Hazel Poa, Mr Nadarajah Loganathan and Mr Jeffrey Khoo.
Mr Leong and Ms Poa, who is now PSP’s secretary-general, then took up positions as Non-Constituency MPs in Parliament.
They ran against a PAP team led by then Minister for Communications and Information S. Iswaran, then Minister for Social and Family Development Desmond Lee, Ms Foo Mee Har, Mr Ang Wei Neng and new candidate Rachel Ong.
The PAP slate will have to be reshuffled for the 2025 polls. Iswaran is serving a one-year jail sentence for obtaining valuable items as a public servant and obstructing justice.
His successor remains unclear.
Most members of the PSP’s 2020 slate were seen at the Feb 23 walkabout with Dr Tan, except Mr Loganathan, a former Singapore Armed Forces officer.
He remains on the party’s central executive committee but has not been seen on the ground or on the party’s social media pages in recent months.
Also present at the Feb 23 walkabout was a new face, Ms Stephanie Tan, 36. Her biography in the party newsletter states that she is a full-time housewife with a law degree from the National University of Singapore. She has two children.
When asked about Ms Tan’s potential candidacy, Dr Tan said: “You will see on Nomination Day.”
He added that the party’s philosophy is to bring in new people because the country has to be run by these people.
He said: “In fact, the country must be run by people better than us because we belong to that generation... The future belongs to them.”
The PSP has had several new faces appear alongside its leaders at walkabouts in recent months. They include Ms Anna Ravichandran, a director with Singapore-based logistics and export firm Raj Global Enterprise, and in-house legal counsel Sani Ismail.
Also in the mix are former journalist Stella Stan Lee and Mr Lawrence Pek, former secretary-general of the Singapore Manufacturing Federation.
This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.
