Political analysts said that the People’s Action Party’s (PAP) decision to move Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat out of Tampines GRC, where he had been an MP for nine years, is intended to stave off the Workers’ Party’s (WP) threat in the East Coast constituency. Associate Professor Alan Chong of RSIS said that voters were “unlikely to want to unseat” Heng. It is a “sure sign that the PAP wants to stem this idea” that WP could eventually wrest East Coast GRC from its grasp, he said.