Who will be the PAP's anchor minister for the new Jurong East-Bukit Batok GRC? Here's our guess.

In case you haven't heard, the upcoming General Elections will see a bunch of changes to the electoral map.

These include five new GRCs, six new SMCs, and a couple of dissolved constituencies to boot.

One new GRC that's kinda interesting? Jurong East-Bukit Batok.

New constituency

The new five-MP GRC includes estates from three different SMCs: Hong Kah North, Bukit Batok, and Yuhua.

Polling districts from those three SMCs, plus the former Jurong GRC, were brought together to form the new Jurong East-Bukit Batok GRC.

The former anchor minister for Jurong GRC was Tharman Shanmugaratnam — who, as you know, is now our country's President.

This begs the question: Who will be the People's Action Party's (PAP) proposed anchor minister for this new GRC?

An educated guess

If we assume that the likeliest option for anchor minister will be someone who's already familiar with the grounds, then these are the options:

• Amy Khor, MP for Hong Kah North SMC
• Murali Pillai, MP for Bukit Batok SMC
• Grace Fu, MP for Yuhua SMC
• MPs for Jurong GRC: Rahayu Mahzam, Tan Wu Meng, Xie Yao Quan, Shawn Huang

Now, since the anchor minister is typically a Cabinet minister who residents would be more likely to be familiar with, Fu could be a plausible choice.

Fu, who is Minister for Sustainability and the Environment and Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations, has represented Yuhua (at that time, still part of the Jurong GRC) since she first joined the PAP in 2006.

After it was carved out into an SMC in 2011, she won the constituency in three consecutive elections, most recently with 70.54 per cent of the vote in 2020.

5 out of 7 MPs

Among the current seven MPs, it is likely to be Fu, Khor, Murali, Rahayu and Tan representing the new GRC.

Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Education and Finance Shawn Huang is likely to join the new West Coast-Jurong West GRC. The new West Coast-Jurong West GRC will absorb areas from the current Jurong GRC that are largely under Taman Jurong ward, which is represented by Huang.

Xie represents the Jurong Central constituency in the current Jurong GRC. As such, he's likely to be the most suitable candidate for the new Jurong Central SMC.

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Top image from Grace Fu/Facebook and Canva