The results are in! After nine days of hard campaigning in the usually quiet district of Bukit Batok, Murali Pillai of People’s Action Party (PAP) emerged victorious in a straight fight for the title of Member of Parliament (MP) in the single member constituency.
Scoring 14,428 votes, the 48-year-old won by 61.21 percent in Bukit Batok as he proclaimed an “ambitious agenda” for the district. His opponent — 53-year-old Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) chief Dr Chee Soon Chuan — won over 9,142 votes at 38.79 percent. A defeat it may be, but the figure stands to be the veteran opposition politician’s personal best since 1997. Maybe it had something to do with his promise to be a full-time MP if he was elected — even pledging to make Bukit Batok the envy of Singapore.
Murali of course had the advantage of having a circle of powerful fellow PAP figures having his back. In a pretty imba war of words the past several days, the likes of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as well as many other ministers and PAP bigwigs held a pretty overkill campaign of putting down Dr Chee’s repute. Utilising excessive personal barbs proved to be an effective strategy, it seems.
Throughout the campaign however, Murali was shadowed by PAP heavyweights whose comments and speeches made bigger splashes in the news — while the candidate himself maintained a muted profile.
From 8am till 8pm, 25,727 registered electors cast their votes at nine polling stations across the constituency — the second time in several months that they’ve done so.
While SDP snagged Bukit Gombak Stadium as their official assembly site, PAP chose not to have an official assembly centre, instead picking their Bukit Batok branch office to hold a press conference after the results. Hundreds of cheering SDP supporters streamed into Bukit Gombak stadium after polls closed as flags, whistles and light sticks were whipped out.
In comparison, PAP’s site was a little more subdued with their supporters simply milling outside the Bukit Batok branch. Things got a little more rousing when Murali as well as a cavalcade of PAP leaders arrived at the branch office and waited out the elections results in the holding room.
#BukitBatok: PAP’s Murali emerged from branch office to greet residents and supporters https://t.co/5YSfCsgM7Nhttps://t.co/PLdq1TLvhf
— The Straits Times (@STcom) May 7, 2016
Vote counting started at about 8.25pm, while the sample count was announced an hour after that, providing an early (and pretty reliable) indication of the final results. Murali managed to lead at 61 percent of the votes while Dr Chee only snagged 39 percent in the initial tally.
High spirits at Bukit Gombak Stadium shifted down a notch following the release of the sample count, and it got even more hushed when the official results were announced a little before 11.30pm. Around 300 supporters gathered round the middle of the field as Dr Chee stood on a table and addressed the crowd in the aftermath of his long, bicycle-powered campaign in Bukit Batok.
“I want to thank all the supporters and the voters of Bukit Batok. To all my supporters — my deep, deep gratitude. For those who didn’t vote for us, I’ll be around to persuade and convince you the next round to vote for the SDP.”
Stating how it didn’t feel like a defeat, he congratulated Murali on the win before profusely thanking his campaign team as well as his family for “working their heart out” throughout the past couple of weeks.
“As I said before in the rallies, I want to win with honor and lose with grace. I want to bow not in defeat, but with grace.”
Over in PAP’s Bukit Batok branch office, the mood was a lot more exuberant with whoops and cheers emanating from the HDB blocks nearby, while the gathered supporters chanted Murali’s endearing moniker “Ah Mu” after the release of the results. Seated in a press conference with four other PAP figures, Murali thanked Dr Chee for running a well-organised campaign and also giving him the “opportunity to articulate his plans”.
Ecstatic from the win, the enthusiastic man mentioned that “I will start work tomorrow; I will serve everybody regardless of political affiliation”. Dedicating the victory to the Bukit Batok residents, he outlined three main programmes that he’ll start pushing for — job placement, healthcare and youth mentorship. Taking on a different stance than before, PAP heavyweights such as Grace Fu, Tharman Shanmugaratnam and more stood to the side and allowed their newest MP to have his time in the spotlight.
Despite their win, folks won’t easily forget that the whole Bukit Batok by-election was prompted by an alleged extramarital affair by former MP David Ong, whose saucy scandal was exposed in March. Apparently he had been intimately involved with a married woman, who is said to be grassroots activist in his constituency. The 54-year-old resigned from his position and the PAP, issuing personal letters of apologies to his former constituents as a sort of aknowledgement of his foolishness.
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