Election spotlight: East Coast GRC ripe ground for GE2025’s plot twists
With battle lines redrawn and significant changes to many constituencies, which will be the ones under the spotlight in GE2025? The Straits Times dives into the issues and concerns on the ground in East Coast GRC.
East Coast has gone from being the smallest five-member GRC to the fourth-largest, with 150,691 voters.ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
Wong Pei Ting
Apr 08, 2025
SINGAPORE – East Coast GRC has been a pressure cooker for four election cycles, and looks set once again to be among the most hotly contested battlegrounds.
The general election in 2025 will likely see the PAP go head-to-head with the Workers’ Party in the constituency for the fifth time.
The ruling party – shored up by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, who was then prime minister-in-waiting – narrowly won its most recent bout in the five-member constituency, with a vote share of 53.4 per cent.
This was down from 60.7 per cent in 2015. While the ruling party’s share of the popular vote rebounded nearly 10 percentage points to 69.9 per cent that year, the recovery in East Coast was more muted.
And in 2011, when the People’s Action Party lost Aljunied GRC, its East Coast vote share slipped 9 percentage points from 2006, to 54.8 per cent.
The GRC
has now absorbed Marine Parade’s Joo Chiat ward, a former single seat that the WP fell just short of winning in 2011. All eyes are on whether the opposition party will make further inroads in 2025.
How the battle will shape up
East Coast – covering large parts of Bedok, Simei and Siglap – has gone from being the smallest five-member group representation constituency to the fourth-largest, with 150,691 voters.
This is with the inclusion of 40,675 people from public housing blocks in Chai Chee, as well as private estates in Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong’s Joo Chiat ward.
Mr Tong has
ramped up appearances with the five East Coast GRC MPs since March 23. Apart from DPM Heng, 63, the constituency has two other political office-holders: Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Maliki Osman, 59, and Senior Minister of State Tan Kiat How, 47.
Rounding up the team are Deputy Speaker of Parliament Jessica Tan, 58, and Ms Cheryl Chan, 49, who is group chief strategy and sustainability officer and president of new ventures at ST Engineering.
It remains to be seen if DPM Heng will stay to defend East Coast GRC as anchor minister, retire, or be deployed elsewhere.
Asked how many ministers would feature in the final line-up, DPM Heng told The Straits Times on April 3 that Prime Minister Lawrence Wong had not yet decided.
Any moves have to be considered against the slates in other GRCs, he said, adding: “When you move one person, you have to move another person, so it is a big puzzle that he has to solve simultaneously.”
Mr Tan, who is Senior Minister of State for National Development and Digital Development and Information, added on April 3 that who the opposition sends to East Coast is “really not material to us”.
“We work hard because we care for the residents here, and we want to make sure we fulfil all the promises we have made. So whether it’s hardly contested or not, or who they send, it is not something that drives our actions,” he said.
IPS Social Lab research fellow Teo Kay Key said it is hard to predict if DPM Heng would stay, given the many boundary changes.
“In general, we have seen comments from PAP MPs so far that they will be prepared to contest seriously wherever they are deployed, which does seem to be a way to prepare the public for any switch-ups in GRC member lists,” she said.
Two PAP new faces have also been spotted in East Coast of late: Mr Dinesh Vasu Dash, 50, the former chief executive of the Agency for Integrated Care, and Madam Hazlina Abdul Halim, 40, the former chief executive of Make-A-Wish Singapore.
(Standing, from left) PAP new face Hazlina Abdul Halim, Senior Minister of State Tan Kiat How, PAP new face Dinesh Vasu Dash, DPM Heng Swee Keat, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong, and Deputy Speaker of Parliament Jessica Tan on a Joo Chiat walkabout on April 5.ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
The duo have attended constituency events twice in six days, adding to expectations that they will be fielded there.
On the opposition front, the hope of an East Coast breakthrough has been almost 20 years in the making for the WP.
It is East Coast GRC and the surrounding areas that have helped the WP clinch five Non-Constituency MP (NCMP) seats, a role given to the “best losers” of each election.
In 2011, two of the three NCMP slots went to Joo Chiat contender Yee Jenn Jong and East Coast contender Gerald Giam.
In 2015, all three NCMP slots went to WP candidates who contested in East Coast GRC and Fengshan SMC. They are East Coast candidates Leon Perera and Daniel Goh, and Fengshan candidate Dennis Tan.
Three of the five – Mr Giam, Mr Perera and Mr Tan – were subsequently fielded elsewhere and became elected MPs.
Three likely WP candidates for East Coast GRC are Singapore Cancer Society deputy director Kenneth Foo, 47, and former researcher Abdul Shariff Aboo Kassim, 59 – both of whom contested the GRC in 2020 – as well as new face Ang Boon Yaw, 42, a lawyer with Yeo Marini Law Corporation.
Mr Ang and Mr Foo are deputy organising secretaries in the party’s top decision-making body, and have been walking the ground in the constituency.
Mr Kenneth Foo (third from right) and Mr Ang Boon Yaw (far right) are two of the four deputy organising secretaries in the WP.PHOTO: KENNETH FOO/FACEBOOK
Speculation is swirling over the last two names for the five-member GRC. One option is for senior counsel Harpreet Singh, 59, who is active in Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC, to move over.
Another possibility is that WP secretary-general and Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh, 48, would leave his safe haven in Aljunied to lead the onslaught at the front line.
Among those who have met WP candidates on the ground is Bedok North resident Ramchand T.R, 64, who said he had a long conversation with Mr Ang at a hawker centre in 2024.
The long-time PAP supporter and director of a coal mining company went away with a good impression of the WP, but said it will be difficult to sway his vote.
“(Mr Ang) was willing to listen and give his own thoughts about matters, but he still needs a bit more to go. If you ask me who I would vote for, I would still want to look at the stability of the country,” he said.
Kampong Chai Chee resident Edmund Yong, 76, said he has also seen WP bigwigs like chairman Sylvia Lim and former chief Low Thia Khiang in the area.
The retiree hopes to see someone like Ms Lim contest in East Coast. “She is recognisable to people here,” he said.
Associate Professor Walid Jumblatt Abdullah, a political scientist from Nanyang Technological University, said Mr Pritam Singh would be making a “super big move” if he contests in East Coast GRC, as opposed to the WP’s more conservative strategy in 2020.
“I would go as far as venturing to say that (Mr Singh is probably the factor that) would tip the balance if you assume that the voting patterns are the same,” he added.
The candidate line-up in East Coast is also of paramount importance for both parties, as the battle for swing voters is expected to be intense, said Singapore Management University law don Eugene Tan. He said how the two parties mount their campaigns will matter, as the campaign period is when many swing voters make up their minds.
“With party positions not diametrically different on key issues, it will boil down to which party inspires more trust and confidence,” he added. “In other words, it’s more a battle for the hearts of voters.”
Responding to residents’ concerns
Boundary changes will make East Coast the GRC with the second-largest number of private properties, after Tanjong Pagar GRC. Condominiums and private apartments make up 34.9 per cent of homes in the constituency, while landed properties make up 13.3 per cent.
HDB flats, located mainly in the northern half of the constituency, account for 50.7 per cent.
This is according to ST’s analysis using Singapore Department of Statistics data dated June 2024.
The analysis also estimated that Gen X and baby boomer voters are over-represented – some 62.6 per cent in the constituency are above 45, versus the national average of 57.9 per cent.
Accordingly, support for seniors – including infrastructure improvements to allow those living alone to lead active lives – features heavily in the much-talked about East Coast Plan. This is done through town audits involving agencies, such as the Centre for Liveable Cities and the MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation.
Digital ambassadors from the SG Digital Office helping residents at
[email protected] PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
Other efforts target young families, young people, private dwellers and vulnerable groups. There are also initiatives focused on digitalisation, sustainability and healthy living.
At the plan’s core is the East Coast Conversation, where residents discussed what mattered to them and worked to put their ideas into action. Modelled after the Our Singapore Conversation series started by then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in 2012, it has hosted more than 200 conversations involving more than 9,000 East Coast residents.
Asked what he thinks has been the East Coast Plan’s biggest impact, Senior Minister of State Tan said: “It’s really not about one specific programme. It’s really about bringing the community together – how we help one another, how we build social bonds, community bonds, and that sense that everyone has a stake in this community.”
DPM Heng said he hopes that he has, through the East Coast Plan, evolved a model of getting citizens to be part of nation-building and community-building efforts.
“While the Government has the resources, in the end, it is about the partnership between all stakeholders – the Government, citizens and private sector – sharing a common purpose and working together to build the community that we want,” he said.
Ms Hazel Chan, 26, who works in the non-profit space, said the little she knows of the plan is that it comes with more green initiatives. She has participated in its Green Ambassador programme, which lets residents take the lead in driving ground-up projects.
On responding to the needs of residents, DPM Heng also said he is wary of creating too sharp a division between those living in public and private housing.
People eating at Bedok 85 Market on April 5.ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
For instance, social activities should be common, although there is inevitably some income tiering to differentiate access to government support schemes, he said.
He recounted how one Tampines resident requested gates to be built around his new Design, Build and Sell Scheme public housing estate, which he had paid a premium for. DPM Heng, who was then an MP in Tampines GRC, refused.
His view then – which he still holds today – is that “you must build a sense of community, not a sense of exclusion that ‘I paid more’, more atas (Malay for high-class)”.
“This is something which I feel that Singapore must guard against, because, as a society, if we begin to discriminate people on the basis of what jobs they do, what school they come from, how rich they are, what kind of homes they live in, and create all these gated communities, it will be very damaging to our sense of unity as a society.”
Post-election surveys from the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) have shown that upper middle-class, better-educated voters are more likely to see political pluralism, and parliamentary checks and balances as important.
“Those broader political and governance principles will matter far more (in East Coast GRC) than anywhere else, where the day-to-day pocketbook and economic issues will weigh more heavily,” noted IPS senior research fellow Gillian Koh.
DPM Heng has a proposal for those who go to the ballot box with such issues on their minds. “I feel strongly that if you really have a good idea, you should come onto the boat with us and row together... Don’t just stand on the shore and criticise.”
