A humdrum Nomination Day

by Bertha Henson

“UNEVENTFUL” was the word that Dr Chee Soon Juan used to describe the morning he went through. And so it was. For a by-election, only the third in recent years, it was rather fuzzy and lacked fizz. So it was “SDP! Dr Chee!” from the Singapore Democratic Party crowd and “PAP! Murali!” from the People’s Action Party side. That was as far as the chants went in Keming Primary School, where the nomination centre was sited.

Braving the heat and humidity and a short sparse drizzle, party supporters spent most of their time taking selfies with prominent personalities as they waited for the list of candidates to be announced. Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam was a prime we-fie target as well as Dr Paul Tambyah from the SDP. Old warhorses were making the rounds too. There was a silver-haired Jufrie Mahmood in SDP red and a thinner Lim Boon Heng in PAP white.

There were a couple of false alarms when private car driver Shirwin Eu turned up. Veteran opposition politician Kwan Yue Keng declared to the media that he would be putting in his nomination papers – if Dr Chee was disqualified. He didn’t want a PAP walkover. The Elections Department said later that it had “explained to [the two] the requirement and procedure under the law for nomination” and that both had left after hearing the explanation without filing any papers.

Mr Eu didn’t even stay to hear Returning Officer Ng Wai Choong announce the candidates. He made his lonesome way out of the school. No accompanying entourage, which makes you wonder who would have been his nominees and assentors. Mr Kwan, a former SDP politician, stayed with the people in red.

So the Bukit Batok by-election has come down to a straight fight between the PAP and the SDP. Everything is going like clockwork barring a slight hitch when it was discovered that the SDP had jumped the gun by putting up banners before noon, when nominations closed. Dr Chee told reporters that they had been taken down. Shrugs.

Lawyer Murali Pillai was accompanied by an entourage of about 200 who made their way in two batches from the nearby HDB estate. Moving under HDB void decks and up and down an overhead bridge, they were in the centre just past 10am. The SDP crew walked from Tong Lai Eating house at 283 Bukit Batok East Avenue 3 which, in a reflection of the dominant Chinese presence, had not a single stall selling halal food. Dr Chee was flanked by his wife, Madam Huang Chih Mei.

On the entrance of the representatives, the media went into the usual scrum hoping for fresh quotes and nuggets of news. But what do either side really have to say now after so much has been said over the past week?

Here is a sample:

Mr Murali: “I would like to take the opportunity to understand [residents’] concerns. I understand their concerns…they are concerned about jobs, costs for their elderly family members who may be sick, they are concerned about how to uplift children from low income families. These are the plans that I will be discussing with them.”

Dr Chee: “You don’t hear a mother saying I will love you only if you give me money… when we care for Singaporeans, we care for them unconditionally, not whether we win or not.”

Nor would either side resort to attacks of a personal nature or on their respective political ideologies. This by-election is about Bukit Batok – and Bukit Batok only.

The only clash was over the status of infrastructure upgrading in the single-seat ward. There was some confusion over whether the PAP’s proposed $1.9m plan is under the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme supervised by the HDB or part of a URA masterplan. Mr Murali’s statement that the programme would be realised only if he became MP and entered the town council has been met with much derision online. SDP thinks this might be a breach of parliamentary election laws. The PAP says its notion is “absurd”.

The PAP’s strategy is this: Convince the 25,727 voters that it is not in their interest to have their ward detached from the Jurong-Clementi town council. The SDP is countering this by assuring residents that it is ready to take over the running of the ward. That was why it announced its town council transition team so early in the game; it’s a confidence-building exercise.

Mr Tharman and Dr Tambyah had a chat as the crowd on the concrete field lapsed into lethargy while waiting for the candidates to re-appear after filing their papers. Dr Tambyah said he enjoyed the engagement and “it’s good to keep it on the issues”. Both shook hands and wished for a “clean fight”.

Speaking to TMG, Mr Tharman reiterated Bukit Batok’s important position in the town council with resources from what he called the “Jurong family”.

“Actually we have given Bukit Batok priority for several years now, because we are GRC and we can allocate our resources. Also, because it is a more mature estate,” he added.

Both men have been pounding pavements and pumping hands; getting personal with residents. Dr Chee is making liberal use of Mandarin while Mr Murali goes by the moniker Ah Mu with Chinese residents.

Mr Murali is banking on his past relationship with the ward where he was branch secretary from 2007 to 2011 before he moved to Paya Lebar to become a member of the suicide team contesting Aljunied GRC in GE2015. Several of his Paya Lebar volunteers were at the centre yesterday to lend him moral support.

Dr Chee is making intensive use of social media to reach his residents, telling them during his walkabouts to look at his Facebook page. Less than an hour after a press conference with the media, Dr Chee was already pulled along by party supporters for a video shoot. His other pitch is that he would be a full-time MP, a point he reiterated when he was on the balcony of the school addressing supporters with Jaslyn Go and another assentor. (Mr Murali had company on the balcony, a Muslim woman in a tudung and a young man. Nope, not family. Just Bukit Batok residents who acted as Mr Murali’s assentors.)

If the opening shot of the by-election is anything to go by, it will be a tame nine days.

 

Featured Image by Najeer Yusof.

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The post A humdrum Nomination Day appeared first on The Middle Ground.

- Bertha Henson