PN Balji on GE2020 Nomination Day: No Lee Hsien Yang, no Low Thia Khiang, but then...
PHOTO: The Straits Times
PUBLISHED ONJune 30, 2020 11:28 AMByPN Balji
The story was supposed to be that of Lee Hsien Yang. Will he or won't he take part in GE2020?
In the end, after all the shadow boxing and teasing, he decided not to fight his brother's party and disappeared from the nomination centre to write his Facebook post.
The man of the moment became Heng Swee Keat, People's Action Party's assistant secretary-general and the politician expected to be Singapore's next PM.
He surprised nearly everyone by moving from his very safe seat of Tampines GRC to the hot seat of East Coast GRC, where the Workers' Party (WP) had made impressive gains in 2015. Two of its politicians went to Parliament and became NCMPs.
Was Heng's move a daring one?
I would say no.
In my books, WP leader Low Thia Khiang's decision to move from the safe seat of Hougang to Aljunied GRC in 2011 would be that killer move. He read the unhappiness in Aljunied and the rest of Singapore very well, chose a team of fighters and went for broke.
On top of that, he had to fight two ministers, one of them a well-respected foreign minister and the other the first female minister. Low and his team sent them packing.
Why did Heng switch?
I can hazard a few guesses.
He wanted to show he was a pathbreaker as no other PM has moved to another constituency in Singapore's electoral history.
There is also the possibility that he wanted to show he can take risks, a calculated one for sure. Maybe he must have felt that there was a chance that East Coast, which nearly fell to the Opposition in the last election, might go down this time round. And he wanted to be that knight in shining armour.
For a PM-in-waiting, Heng's public appearance after his nomination was announced was underwhelming. His speech was cut off as he and his team had overshot the given time to them.
In the grand scheme of things, this is not really a disaster. But when the TV camera shows you surprised and embarrassed, it makes one wonder.
Then, Heng didn't seem well-prepared. In his speech, he kept repeating his words and his message didn't seem coherent.
The surefootedness was missing — he tried to look at his notes but in the end it didn't help.
When added to some of the Covid-19 and other missteps that the government and PAP has made in the run-up to Nomination Day it makes one wonder if the PAP was losing decisiveness.
The man of the GE2020 moment might just turn out to be Paul Tambyah, the highly respected infectious disease specialist.
Nothing seems to upset him. He has a disarming style, comes across as sincere but displays sharpness with his political comments.
After Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Tambyah is the most likeable man in Singapore politics.
He is gunning for the Bukit Panjang single seat and going against the ruling party's Liang Eng Hwa. Both drew fire in Holland-Bukit Timah GRC in 2015. It is a contest that deserves watching.
As for Aljunied GRC, the PAP is keeping to most of its 2015 team which nearly wrested the constituency back from the WP.
But the Opposition party, suffering from the loss of its captain, Low, has an uphill climb. It brought in Leon Perera and Gerald Giam but will that be enough?
Don't discount that old warhorse, Chee Soon Juan of the Singapore Democratic Party.
His decision to stay on in the single seat of Bukit Batok shows a man who has made a calculated move to reduce his GRC ambitions.
And if his attacks against incumbent PAP MP Murali Pillai are any indication, grassroots issues will take centre stage.
These issues will be pinned on Chee's charge that Murali cannot pay full attention to Bukit Batok because the latter has to also worry about his job as a lawyer.
With Lee Hsien Yang and Low Thia Khiang taking themselves out of the electoral equation, many feel GE2020 might turn out to be a lacklustre contest. The story may be very different as we enter the nine-day campaigning period.
PN Balji is a veteran Singaporean journalist who was formerly chief editor of Today and The New Paper. He is the author of the book Reluctant Editor and is currently a media consultant. The views expressed are his own.
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