GE2025: PAP rolls out East Coast Plan website

SINGAPORE: The People’s Action Party (PAP) on Tuesday (Apr 15) launched a website with details of the East Coast Plan, including interactive maps showing improved facilities and ongoing works of community spaces within different areas in East Coast.

The website – titled East Side, Best Side – comprises five sections: the plan, the progress, the promise, the people and the pulse. 

It illustrates what has been done for East Coast GRC residents from 2020 to 2025. This includes strengthening financial aid for lower-income families and expanding access to healthcare; encouraging urban farming and food sustainability; and programmes that promote digital and lifelong learning as well as intergenerational bonding. 

It also showcases ongoing and newly finished infrastructure improvement via an interactive map for each area in the GRC: Bedok, Changi Simei, Fengshan, Kampong Chai Chee, Chai Chee, Siglap and Joo Chiat. 

The website outlines eight pillars in the East Coast Plan for the next five years – to make East Coast a place to learn, care, eat, pray, conserve, play, shape the future, and a place for all. 

Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, anchor minister for the five-member East Coast Group Representation Constituency (GRC) in the previous General Election, was absent from the event. 

He was at the annual Administrative Service dinner on Tuesday night.

The “East Coast Plan” catchphrase went viral after Mr Heng’s Nomination Day gaffe at the 2020 General Election when he stumbled over his speech while introducing his plan for East Coast residents. He has since publicly embraced his slip-up.

DPM HENG REMAINS PART OF EAST COAST

Addressing questions about Mr Heng’s absence on Tuesday evening, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong told reporters that Mr Heng was at another event.

“But DPM Heng remains part of the East Coast and he is currently serving as the grassroots advisor as well as the MP looking after (the) Bedok (ward),” Mr Tong said. 

Mr Tong’s current ward of Joo Chiat in Marine Parade GRC – as well as part of the Kembangan-Chai Chee ward – were shifted to East Coast GRC following the redrawing of electoral boundaries. 

Asked whether he could now be the anchor minister in the PAP’s East Coast slate for the coming election, he said: “I think DPM has made the point quite clear. We will be able to confirm it when our (secretary-general) clears the team. 

“And as you know, there’s a regular cadence of teams being announced starting a few days ago, and in due course, East Coast GRC will also be announced.”

Singaporeans will head to the polls on May 3 for the country’s 14th General Election, after President Tharman Shanmugaratnam dissolved parliament on Tuesday. Nomination Day is on Apr 23.

Also present to launch the East Coast Plan website on Tuesday were Senior Minister of State Tan Kiat How, previous Deputy Speaker of Parliament Jessica Tan, as well as PAP new faces Hazlina Abdul Halim and Goh Pei Ming.

Mr Tan and Ms Tan were elected Members of Parliament (MPs) for East Coast GRC in the previous election.

Mdm Hazlina will be taking the place of Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Mohamad Maliki Osman – part of PAP’s winning team for East Coast in 2020 – in the upcoming election.

Dr Maliki said last Saturday that he wouldn’t be contesting in East Coast GRC in the election, although he declined to say if he would be retiring from politics or redeployed to another constituency.

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