PAP helps rivals to avoid disqualification
Reform Party's Kenneth Jeyaratnam looks at his nomination papers for West Coast GRC as PAP's S Iswaran looks on at Keming primary School on September 1, 2015. An error in the forms was pointed out by the PAP West Coast GRC team and subsequently corrected by the Reform Party. Photo: Jason Quah
SINGAPORE — Several opposition candidates were notified by their rivals to rectify their nomination papers at Keming Primary School today (Sept 1), averting a scenario that could have resulted in disqualification and walkover.
An eagle-eyed People’s Action Party (PAP) supporter had been the first to flag the mistake on the Reform Party’s (RP) team for West Coast GRC’s nomination papers.
“They had not deleted the words ‘We are standing as a group of independent candidates’ in their declaration before a Commissioner of Oaths,” explained Minister in Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) S Iswaran, who is part of PAP’s team for West Coast GRC. This is against election laws, as a candidate cannot be both independent and belong to a party.
While this was grounds for a technical disqualification, Mr Iswaran decided to notify the RP team at around 11.30am, so that they had sufficient time to rectify it before the noon deadline. He was overheard telling RP’s Kenneth Jeyaratnam that “it’s an easy thing to fix”.
“We want to make sure that the voters of West Coast GRC have a choice. We want to have a fair fight and let the voters choose. I think the RP appreciated the fact that we highlighted this to them and they rectified it,” Mr Iswaran said.
Mr Jeyaratnam was displeased that the PAP supporters had kicked up a fuss over the error.
“I don’t know why the PAP had to make such a big fuss of it. Are they worried about a contest in West Coast?” he said. He noted, however, that Mr Iswaran was “quite helpful” and “courteous” in pointing it out.
This was not the only mishap over nomination papers at the nomination centre today. Singapore Democratic Party’s Ms Jaslyn Go and Mr Sadasivam Veriyah, running in Yuhua and Bukit Batok SMCs, respectively, had made the same slip-up.
Minister in PMO Grace Fu, who is the incumbent Member of Parliament for Yuhua SMC, said: “We noted it after it was pasted on the board. So, we highlighted to them and asked them to rectify it. It’s a technical issue and we didn’t want to make it a big issue. We thought the contest would be much better than to have them disqualified.”
In response TODAY’s queries, Ms Go acknowledged that it was “quite sweet” of Ms Fu to flag it. But she felt that it was a non-issue.
“When we asked the Returning Officer, they said it’s not even an issue. But since the PAP wants us to remove that, we just struck it off,” she said. The Commissioner of Oath advised Mr Sadasivam to check his documents for the same lapse, and to standardise it “just in case any objection was raised”.
