SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said on Saturday (Apr 12) that the People’s Action Party (PAP) will be fielding its largest slate of new faces in recent history at the upcoming General Election, as he announced an unchanged slate at Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC.

Over 30 new PAP candidates will be unveiled in the coming contest, he added. 

At the last election, the PAP fielded 27 new faces. In the two elections before that, there were 24 each.

“The team in Marsiling-Yew Tee has not changed, but there will be more significant changes elsewhere. In fact, this is the largest slate of new faces we have introduced in recent history,” he said.

Mr Wong has been a part of Marsiling-Yew Tee - a four-member constituency - since its formation in 2015, and this is his first electoral contest since taking over as prime minister in May last year.

Speaking to the media at the PAP’s Limbang branch office, Mr Wong said: “Over the past few months and weeks, the PAP has deployed several new faces on the ground. We have now finalised our candidates for the coming general election, and starting today, we will introduce them, constituency by constituency.”

Mr Wong, who is the PAP Secretary-General, noted that the fact that the party is formally introducing candidates starting Saturday “means that the General Election is approaching”.

“We have an excellent team of MPs today, but to serve Singaporeans better, I need to renew and refresh the PAP team, to bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy,” he said, adding that it has been one of his key priorities since taking office.

On the party's format of unveiling candidates "constituency by constituency”, he said that the system had worked well previously, which is why it is doing this.

"When I looked back at my experiences in the last two general elections, I thought the 2015 way of doing it ... focusing on the constituency and the team that forms that constituency - it could be a single, it could be a GRC, and perhaps the GRC and the adjacent single might do it together - I think that format had worked well and I quite liked that format in 2015," he said.

"So we decided to try it this way this round."

RENEWAL OF PARTY LEADERSHIP

In response to a question on leadership renewal, Mr Wong said he is refreshing the party’s slate in order to ensure a “good pace of renewal” in the coming years.

“Why make these changes now? Because each time I fail to do so, it's another five years. And then we bring people in later, it will make it harder, it will be slower to refresh and renew the team,” he said.

He said Singaporeans are concerned about this because they can already see that quite a number of ministers in the current Cabinet are aged 60 and above.

“Within my Cabinet, I'm one of the younger ones already, and we are the minority,” said Mr Wong, who is 52.

He added that keeping the current team would mean that the average age gets older and that the process of renewal is delayed, something that “will not be in the interest in the longer term for Singapore”.

“I may be okay for five years, but I am storing up more challenges for the country in the future, so I would rather have a good pace of renewal. There will be existing members of the team who will continue. Amongst them, Senior Minister Lee (Hsien Loong) is still continuing, DPM Gan (Kim Yong) certainly will continue,” said Mr Wong.

Mr Lee had handed over the country’s leadership reins to Mr Wong in May last year, while Mr Gan was chosen as one of two deputy prime ministers in Mr Wong’s first Cabinet.

Beyond the Cabinet, the party also needs to refresh its slate of backbenchers, said Mr Wong.

“We also need to refresh and update our backbenchers, our team of candidates who will hopefully, as many of them as possible, become MPs. And amongst them, some MPs who do well may be called to serve as an office holder in due course,” he said.

“I think that leadership or that renewal and that rejuvenation of the PAP team is essential, so that we as a party can offer Singapore and Singaporeans the best chance of taking our country forward, not just today, not just in the next one, two years, but over the medium to longer term.”

MARSILING-YEW TEE GRC

The unchanged line-up at Marsiling-Yew Tee features all four incumbents: Mr Wong, Senior Minister of State for Defence and Manpower Zaqy Mohamad, North West District Mayor Alex Yam and Ms Hany Soh.

No changes were made to the constituency's boundaries in last month's report by the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC).

"Where I stand, I think really doesn't matter. I can go elsewhere, but I've decided to stand here and remain here in Marsiling-Yew Tee, and that I will contest here as a candidate," said Mr Wong.

"But importantly, I will lead the party into elections, I will present the case to Singaporeans, and I hope Singaporeans will give me and my team the chance to do our best for them in these very difficult times."

The next general election must be held by Nov 23 this year. The polls are expected to be called soon, following the release of the country’s revised electoral map last month.

In the last general election in 2020, the PAP team retained the GRC with 63.18 per cent of the votes against a Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) line-up. The SDP has again declared its intent to contest the ward in this year’s contest.

A decade on from the creation of Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC, Mr Wong and Mr Yam remain from the original team.

Mr Zaqy was a Chua Chu Kang GRC MP from 2011, but started helping out in the constituency as a grassroots adviser after Madam Halimah Yacob left in 2017 to contest the presidential election. In 2020, he joined the Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC slate, along with Ms Soh.

Mr Wong, who is the anchor minister, recently highlighted major long-term projects that are in the works in the constituency, during the launch of the Marsiling-Yew Tee Town Five-Year Masterplan for 2025 to 2030.

They include two new Downtown Line MRT stations that would better connect residents to the city, and the redevelopment of Kranji racecourse and Woodlands Checkpoint.