The Reform Party could have been barred from contesting in West Coast GRC, if not for the timely intervention of Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, S Iswaran.
Mr Iswaran trumpeted his achievement of keeping his competitor in the running, thereby preventing stroll in the park to his fifth term as MP.
In a post on Facebook, Mr Iswaran said:
“This morning at the Nomination Centre, the Reform Party’s nominations papers contained an error. They had not deleted the words “We are standing as a group of independent candidates” in their declaration before a Commissioner of Oaths. This is against our election laws as you cannot be both independent candidates and party candidates. Our PAP team spotted the error and I informed Mr Kenneth Jeyaratnam of the Reform Party so that they had enough time to correct it. If the error wasn’t corrected, we were advised that the Reform Party team would have been disqualified on technical grounds. We the PAP team do not want to win on technicalities. We want to give our West Coast GRC voters a choice and look forward to a fair contest between our PAP team and the Reform Party team.”
The RP team will be led by secretary-general Kenneth Jeyaretnam, Andy Zhu, real estate firm manager Darren Soh, and customer service executive Noraini Yunus.
It’s aiming to defeat the PAP lineup of Mr Iswaran, Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang, NTUC Assistant Secretary General Patrick Tay and Ms Foo Mee Har.
