Dr Chee ‘proud but disappointed’ with by-election result
SDP's Dr. Chee Soon Juan speaks to the media at Bukit Gombak stadium following his defeat at the Bukit Batok by-election to PAP's Murali Pillai. Photo: Ernest Chua/TODAY
SINGAPORE — Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) chief Chee Soon Juan said his showing in the Bukit Batok by-election is something his team could be proud of and encouraged by, even as he expressed disappointment at not crossing the “50 per cent threshold”.
Dr Chee, who won 38.8 per cent of the vote, congratulated People's Action Party's (PAP) Murali Pillai on his victory and said he would continue to stay around and persuade those who did not vote for the SDP to do so in future.
He wanted to remain in Bukit Batok single-member constituency (SMC) in the next General Election, but said that it also depended on whether the electoral boundaries change.
Addressing his party activists and supporters at Bukit Gombak stadium who had stayed till 11.30pm when the results were announced, Dr Chee stood on a table with his wife, Dr Huang Chih Mei, and thanked them.
Asked later if he was heartened by his best performance ever in an election, he said to reporters: “I suppose every time you don’t meet the 50-per-cent threshold you are very disappointed. But you see where we’ve come. I always believe it’s not where we are at any one point. So it’s where we’ve come from and where we are headed to and in this regard, I think it’s something to look forward to and something we can be very proud of.”
In 2015’s General Election, his team in Holland-Bukit Timah group representation constituency (GRC) took 33.4 per cent of the vote.
This is the fifth constituency that Dr Chee has contested after Marine Parade GRC (1992), MacPherson SMC (1997), Jurong GRC (2001) and Holland-Bukit Timah GRC.
Previously, he garnered between 20.3 and 34.9 per cent of the vote as a candidate in a single-seat ward or as part of an SDP team contesting in a GRC.
Dr Chee said that the team was never under the illusion that the by-election campaign would be an easy battle, adding that people “sometimes lose sight that we are still struggling in an undemocratic society”.
Asked about Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s Facebook comments that Mr Murali's victory showed that all Singaporeans were united in building a better nation, Dr Chee said: “If you wanted to say this and you campaigned on this, you won on this, it’s a very different story, right? But when you campaign on faults, (newspaper) headlines, what else can I say? When I said my opponent wasn’t just Mr Murali, it was the media, the state machinery — that was exactly what I meant.”
He was referring to a Lianhe Wanbao front-page headline that ran last Thursday, stating that he did not regret his “crazy” past, something the Chinese evening daily later corrected.
On the vote swing of more than 10 percentage-points away from the PAP in this by-election — Mr Murali’s 61.2 per cent compared to former Member of Parliament David Ong’s 73 per cent — Dr Chee said that his party would have to analyse the results but would want to maintain the trajectory and continue the momentum.
However, he added that he was proud that his party campaigned on ideas and what it wanted to do for Bukit Batok, despite its opponents “engaging in the kind of politics we wouldn’t wish to see in Singapore”.
