West Coast residents will have to decide who they want as their representatives in parliament come the next General Election.
With that, we shine the spotlight on what current PAP MP Ang Wei Neng and challenger PSP NCMP Leong Mun Wai have been up to of late.
Exactly one year ago (1 Mar 2022), Ang proposed a “timestamp” on degrees conferred by local universities.
These degrees will “fad over time”, unless graduates attend upgrading courses.
This was Ang’s “radical” idea to transform Singapore’s Institutes of Higher Learning.
Ang was widely panned for his wacky proposal, with many calling him a laughing stock who would set local graduates back in terms of career prospects.
He later said that this was not a policy proposal and apologised for the “misunderstanding”.
This got him hammered further, with the local public telling him in no desirable terms not to waste parliament’s time with nonsense pulled out from a certain bodily orifice.
West Coast PSP voters (48 percent) got their day in the sun one year later, when Leong stormed parliament with a radical housing policy aimed at replacing the BTO scheme.
Blaming the BTO scheme for the unaffordability and long waiting times young Singaporeans face for their first home, he proposed the Affordable Housing Scheme and the Millennial Apartments Scheme.
Broadly, the schemes involved pricing flats without land cost until such time that they are sold, and the ramping up of supply of rental flats to house young couples while they wait for their new flats to be built.
While not perfect, the schemes were well-received by the public, already fed up with problems compounded over the years by the government’s BTO scheme, and the ideas were expounded on and debated in parliament.
West Coast has been earmarked as a close fight between the PAP and PSP in the coming GE.
In GE2020, the PAP won by just a 2 percent margin.
