Singapore GE2025: Workers Party did well despite vote swing to PAP, says Pritam

The Star

05-05-2025

SINGAPORE: In an initial assessment of his party's electoral performance, Workers' Party chief Pritam Singh (pic) attributed the swing against the opposition to people giving Prime Minister Lawrence Wong a strong mandate amid a difficult international environment.
In this context, the WP had done 'very commendably', consolidating its hold over Aljunied GRC, Sengkang GRC and Hougang SMC, he said.
Even in the other five constituencies that it did not win, the party's candidates 'came really close', the 48-year-old Leader of the Opposition told reporters.
'I am very proud of the results in Hougang, Aljunied and Sengkang, where we have consolidated the position of the party,' he said.
'I couldn't be prouder of the team. I think they did a very, very good job. They fought very hard, they tried very hard for each vote, and I think they should be proud of themselves, and I am very proud of them.'
Pritam was speaking at a doorstop interview at Block 630 Bedok Reservoir Road market on May 4, a day after his party failed to gain new ground at the polls, despite anticipation that it might win a new constituency.
WP won Aljunied GRC with 59.68 per cent of the vote, Sengkang GRC with 56.31 per cent and Hougang SMC with 62.17 per cent. It lost in Punggol GRC, Tampines GRC, East Coast GRC, Tampines Changkat SMC and Jalan Kayu SMC, with its teams garnering above 40 per cent of votes.
Based on its results in Jalan Kayu SMC and Tampines GRC, WP will be able to send two Non-Constituency MPs into Parliament. When asked, Pritam said the party had not made a decision on the matter.
As the polls closed at 8pm on May 3 and results trickled in over the course of the night, the ruling PAP saw a nationwide swing in its favour with 65.57 per cent of the popular vote, compared with its 61.24 per cent share in 2020.
The WP's vote share, meanwhile, inched down slightly from 50.5 per cent in 2020 to 50 per cent this time around.
Amid the showing, there have been suggestions that the party may have made tactical missteps by stretching its higher-profile candidates thin across two new battlegrounds in Punggol and Tampines GRCs, instead of consolidating them in places like East Coast GRC, where it previously got 46.61 per cent of the vote in the 2020 General Election against a PAP team led by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat.
Some also questioned the party's decision not to contest in Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC, seemingly taken at the last minute. The WP has contested in the constituency since 2015, prior to the redrawing of electoral boundaries.
Of the party's strategies, Pritam said he was proud that WP was not boxed in by electoral boundary changes, adding that the party's capacity to 'break out' of its original stomping grounds to move into other areas 'speaks well of (it) organisationally'.
'In hindsight, everybody is a master, but I am actually very warmed by how the party responded to the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee report,' he added.
In moving from Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC to Punggol GRC, the party also did very well, said Pritam, adding that he was 'delighted at how quickly the party was able to pivot its resources' towards the new constituency.
Pritam was also asked if WP should have fielded more established candidates in Tampines GRC and Jalan Kayu SMC, where the party lost by narrow margins. He said that while he understood the reasoning, the party's strategy was based on its understanding of the ground.
'If you put somebody else, then either you weaken another team, or you strengthen another team, and then your overall strategy is... not in equilibrium any more,' he said.
With the national vote swing of about five percentage points towards the PAP, 'there is always going to be one party that is going to be on the ascendancy, (and) one party that is not', he noted.
He pointed to similar patterns in the 2015 election, where the WP did not win any new constituency, and in 2020, where voters instead swung in the opposition's favour and the WP took Sengkang GRC.
Such 'gyrations' were likely to keep happening in future elections, he added.
Meanwhile, WP chair Sylvia Lim, 60, also speaking at the interview, said the results presented the party with a chance for renewal, as several of its 'up and coming young leaders' were elected into Parliament.
She noted that three of the ten elected MPs will be new MPs, namely, Fadli Fawzi and Kenneth Tiong in WP's Aljunied team, and Abdul Muhaimin from its Sengkang team.
'So, I mean, having been in this business for quite long, I do see that there is an opportunity here for us,' she said.
This election, the WP had also pulled further apart from other smaller opposition players, some of which performed badly enough to lose their election deposits.
Pritam declined to comment on the results of other parties when asked, but said: 'They know how they did, why they did, where they put their chips.'
He also addressed the WP's decision not to address talks with other opposition parties to avoid multi-cornered fights.
'I would just say that we have got our agenda, and they have got their agenda,' he said.
'I wouldn't be surprised to see more three- or four-cornered fights in the future, but we have to be clear as a party why we are going to a certain place and whether we can give the voters there a good fight and make sure that we can represent them faithfully in Parliament. That would be our objective.' - The Straits Times/ANN