Apart from my own GRC (East Coast), there are a few other wards that i believe would be worth paying attention to: Holland-Bukit Timah, Marsiling-Yew Tee, Marine Parade, and the SMCs of Fengshan, Potong Pasir, Hong Kah North, Mountbatten, and MacPherson.
For MacPherson, it will be an interesting battle (i will ignore the NSP candidate because he will not be getting back his deposit). Tin Pei Ling, the parliamentarian with whom Singaporeans have a, shall we say ‘special’ relationship, will be contesting.
To be honest, my respect for her has increased so much. In 2011, i was one of those who didn’t think much of her, after witnessing her campaign. But over the past 4 years, i think she has behaved in an extremely dignified manner, and the fact that she is contesting an SMC is a display of so much courage; even many of her more senior colleagues have never been through such a battle. Evidently, she is confident that she has done enough work on the ‘ground’ to be re-elected without riding on anyone’s coat-tails.
I truly feel that she has transformed her reputation from a political joke to a serious parliamentarian. (Incidentally, the other person who was a bit of a joke during the 2011 hustings, Chan Chun Sing, has also impressed me in the past four years: so there may still be hope for the fist-pumper and mike-grabber.)
Under normal circumstances then, i would be rooting for her.
However…..
Her opponent happens to be someone i know pretty well: a friend of 13 years, Chen Jiaxi Bernard. We went to JC together (Tampines JC, not some elitist school :p). He comes from a legtimately humble background (i know all politicians say that, but this is one that i can verify!).
After JC, he did not enter university right away, but did not give up: he went to poly, then read history at NUS, and went on to do his Master’s at Oxford.
But perhaps the most important thing to know about him is, he joined WP long ago. Way before 2011. And this matters in a huge way: it is easy to join a party when it is successful and then claim that ‘i have always wanted to serve the people’, but it is quite a different thing to join a party that did not seem like it was going to be a force to be reckoned with.
It is something like this that serves as a far better gauge of sincerity than running from door-to-door on house visits (while being captured on video), taking selfies with residents, carrying random babies/cats/babies of cats, and posting statuses about how ‘people-ask-if-the-MPS-was-so-tiring-because-it-ended-at-2am-but-i-do-not-mind-it-at-all-since-what-matters-most-to-me-is-the-welfare-of-the-residents’.
So, i shall throw my weight behind him and will be hoping for his victory.
Either way, i think MacPherson residents will be in an desirable position.
Source: Walid J. Abdullah
