Singapore's ruling party PAP wins Bukit Batok by-election

K Muralidharan Pillai, the candidate for Singapore's ruling party People's Action Party (PAP), garnered the by-election for Bukit Batok Single Member Constituency (SMC) winning 61 percent of the votes on Saturday, according to result of sample count by Elections Department of Singapore (ELD).

The Bukit Batok single seat was vacated after PAP's representative David Ong resigned over an alleged extramarital affair in March. The result of vote sample showed PAP won the by-election, while Chee Soon Juan, the candidate for Singapore's opposition party Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), had 39 percent of the votes.

There are 25,727 registered electors in the single-member constituency. The sample count result, which gives an early indication of the possible by-election result, is derived from a random count of 100 ballot papers from each of the nine polling stations in Bukit Batok. It is not final, the ELD said in its statement.

In the General Election last September, PAP's David Ong won the Bukit Batok SMC with 73.02 percent of the votes. Singapore Democratic Party's (SDP) Sadasivam Veriyah took 26.38 percent, while independent candidate Samir Salim Neji garnered 0.6 percent.

Source: XINHUA