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GE2025: WP holds its place amid national swing against opposition
SINGAPORE - An air of disappointment hung over Serangoon Stadium, where WP supporters and members had gathered late on May 3 to await the results of the general election.
Many had turned up with flags bearing the party’s hammer logo, as well as inflatable hammers.
But as sample counts trickled in and it became apparent that WP had failed to win any new constituency, dejected supporters started leaving the stadium grounds.
This was a far cry from the mood at the party’s rock-concert-like rallies over the nine days of hustings, which was jubilant and hopeful, with crowds busting the capacity of the venues.
For WP, there was perhaps a sense of deja vu.
In 2015, spurred by its historic 2011 win in Aljunied GRC, the party had gone all out to try to seize East Coast GRC.
It fielded its best team, which then WP chief Low Thia Khiang described as the party’s next generation of leaders.
In the end, WP was blindsided by a drubbing at the ballot box. Not only did it not gain any new constituency, but it also came within a hair’s breadth of losing Aljunied, winning just 50.96 per cent of the vote.
This time around, the party had gone into the election again hoping to build on the momentum of its 2020 win in Sengkang GRC.
Even before the hustings, party members had described the polls as “high-stakes”, and were cautiously hopeful about winning another constituency.
After all, the party felt it had assembled a stellar team – what with a “star catch” in senior counsel Harpreet Singh – and other highly qualified candidates, including a former diplomat and a clinical psychologist.
WP chief Pritam Singh and chairwoman Sylvia Lim even described them as the party’s best-ever slate.
So what should one take away from the eventual results?
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Much will be made of whether the party may have made a
tactical error in gunning for Punggol and Tampines GRCs, where it is said to have fielded its best candidates.
Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but would the party have won at least one new constituency if it had sent a stronger candidate to Jalan Kayu instead?
Its candidate there, new face Andre Low, received 48.53 per cent of the vote,
losing to labour chief Ng Chee Meng from the PAP.
But even if WP did not do as well as anticipated by some, it did hold on to all its three existing constituencies, improving slightly on the vote share in Hougang SMC with 62.17 per cent of the vote, and
Sengkang with 56.31 per cent, and maintaining the vote share in Aljunied, with 59.68 per cent of the vote.
Where it lost, WP teams also polled above 40 per cent. For instance, in Punggol against a team led by Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong, the WP received 44.83 per cent of the vote, and in East Coast against a team led by Culture, Community and Youth Minister Edwin Tong, it got 41.24 per cent.
Seen against the landslides in many other constituencies, where the PAP won with 70 to 80 per cent of the vote against other opposition parties, the results show there is clearly a strong desire for a continued WP presence. Perhaps, even a strong mandate for the party as the entrenched opposition.
What this means for WP, though, is that it will become harder to capitalise on its underdog status in future elections.
This election, it sought to show the impact it has made in Parliament and its competence in running town councils.
No doubt voters will be expecting more results in these areas as expectations climb.
Also, the message of an opposition wipeout, which the party used to its advantage in 2020, may no longer work in future elections, since it is clear that sophisticated voters know which parties they want around and which they have had enough of.
As WP goes about its post-mortem, it will have to think of another message that will resonate with voters in the next general election, if it wants to repeat the comeback it made in 2020.
What the results also show is that it will be a long, hard slog for the party to win one-third of the seats in Parliament – its medium-term goal.
But while in the near term, it may seem as though it is not making many gains, WP has clearly put itself on course to be the closest alternative to the PAP and set Singapore on the road to a two-party system.
In such a system, there can be a strong mandate for the PAP, but also a strong desire for the WP.
Both can be true, and in this GE, one did not take away from the other.
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