SINGAPORE — Presidential candidate Tan Kin Lian's campaign shifted gears on Tuesday (Aug 29) away from mingling with voters in food centres to meeting them at home.
With two days left for campaigning, the aim now is to try and reach voters who are not on social media or at the hawker centres, said Mr Allan Yeo, one of Mr Tan's campaign managers.
On Tuesday morning, some 20 volunteers fanned out to distribute Mr Tan's campaign fliers across Queenstown, Dover, Clementi, Jurong East and Buona Vista. Mr Tan, 75, was not with them.
Volunteers went floor to floor at housing blocks near Queenstown MRT station, where they handed fliers to residents, or left them at the door if no one answered.
The plan is to hand out around 30,000 fliers to residents in the west on Tuesday, before tackling other regions on Wednesday, said Mr Yeo. He added that Mr Tan's team had printed around 150,000 fliers earlier in the week, which cost just under $15,000.
"We are trying to reach the middle ground: We've done podcasts for the younger audiences, hawker centres for the older people," said Mr Yeo. "The fliers are for people who are not on social media."
Some 20 volunteers will be assigned daily to help distribute fliers during the remaining days of campaigning, with four volunteers allocated to each neighbourhood to visit as many flats as they can, he added.
On Sunday, Mr Tan told reporters that he had cancelled his walkabouts for the remaining days of campaigning. He had initially planned to visit Boon Lay Place Market and Food Village on Monday and Ayer Rajah Food Centre on Tuesday.
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The next day, he put out a Facebook post to say the walkabouts had been cancelled so that his team could focus on handing out fliers in the HDB heartland and MRT stations across Singapore.
The former NTUC Income chief executive has been on daily walkabouts since Nomination Day, with the exception of Aug 26, when he attended a closed-door dialogue organised by the National University of Singapore Society.
Residents whom ST spoke to on Tuesday - mostly seniors or others who were working from home - said handing out fliers in person was a nice touch.
Visiting residents at their homes will allow candidates to reach those who rarely head out and have little chance to catch the candidates on their visits to hawker centres, said former cleaner Tan Bon Yeo, 73.
Madam Tan, who has seen interviews with Mr Tan on TV, said in Mandarin: "I won't get a chance to see the candidates at the food (centre) because I rarely go there. I think knocking on our doors is a sincere way to connect with us."
Digital marketer Cherilyn Lim, 32, said visiting residents individually was a "very manual process" that required a lot of effort.
"Campaigns are often quite distant to me as I only see them on TV or online, so receiving a flier from the team shows the effort they are taking to connect with us," she added.
On Tuesday, Mr Tan said the online rally he had initially planned for Wednesday "has been shelved". The rally, which he had announced on Aug 25, was supposed to feature "several speeches... by prominent people". This came after he dropped plans for a physical rally due to the cost.
Mr Tan's media team said the presidential candidate will join volunteers in distributing fliers in the north-east on Wednesday, with plans to visit Hougang, Sengkang and Punggol.
This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.
