Murali Pillai, the candidate of the People's Action Party (PAP), has won the Bukit Batok by-election with 61.2 percent of the votes. The election results were announced by the Elections Department (ELD) on Saturday night (May 7).
Chee Soon Juan, Murali's opponent from the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), received 38.8 percent of votes in a one-on-one contest for the single member ward.
The 48-year-old lawyer received 14,428 votes while Chee got 9,142 votes. As many as 622 votes were rejected and a total of 23,570 valid votes were cast. A total of 24,192 votes were cast, inclusive of 622 rejected votes,, bringing up the voting percentage to 94.03 percent.
The complete result of the election was announced at 11:26 pm on Saturday (May 7). Earlier, the ELD had released a sample count which showed Murali was ahead of his competitor with a similar margin.
Although Murali has won this election his predecessor David Ong had won with a bigger percentage of the votes during the 2015 general elections. Ong received 73.02 per cent of the votes in his favour.
Chee did better than Sadasivam Veriyah of the SDP, who had obtained 26.38 per cent of the votes during the last election.
In his final rally speech on Thursday night, Murali had asked for a "very strong" command from voters in Bukit Batok so that he could continue to serve them. As reported by Reuters, Murali said: "This is not about myself, this is about you, serving you ... With your mandate, I would personally lead my team of dedicated volunteers whom I have known for 16 years." Murali has been working as one of the grassroots activists in the constituency for 16 years.
As a result of Murali's victory, SDP will have to continue its almost two-decades -long absence from the Parliament. The party once had three seats in the House.
