Is Nicole Seah outshining the rest of her NSP team?
National Solidarity Party (NSP) secretary-general Goh Meng Seng has brushed off concerns the General Election's youngest candidate, Nicole Seah, is "outshining" the rest of his team.
Speaking to Yahoo! Singapore on the sidelines of the NSP rally at Whampoa on Saturday, Goh dismissed claims from the PAP that Seah seemed to be "leading" the party. The PAP had also questioned the function of the rest of the candidates.
But Goh said, "I'm happy she is our wild card," he said. "If she's not here, we would not have had the crowd (we did); why should we be worried about it?"
In the space of a few short weeks, Seah has captured the imagination of voters and netizens alike.
The 24-year-old candidate, who will contesting the Marine Parade GRC, currently has over 46,000 fans on Facebook. Her aggressive, direct and passionate rally speeches have also been a mainstay of NSP rally speeches. Indeed, her instant popularity has even led a chain of watch shops to offer her an endorsement deal.
To add to the newly-attained 'diva' status Seah seems to enjoy, her arrival in the middle of Whampoa SMC candidate Ken Sun's speech during Saturday's rally was a sight to behold.
Flanked by seven "bodyguards" clad in the NSP's signature orange shirts, she made her way through the barricaded walkway to the stage. Dressed in all-black instead of the typical pale pink NSP shirt, she immediately stood out even as rousing cheers from the estimated 3,000-strong placard-waving crowd drowned out Sun's speech.
Despite the fact many in the audience came just to hear Seah speak, Goh said he's unconcerned about the "Nicole" effect.
He said the crowds will realise, after attending their first NSP rally that they are worth attending and that eventually, with or without Nicole's attendance, they would continue to draw sizeable crowds.
"It's just like doing sales," Goh said. "You put a 50 per cent sale, and people will come, and later on even if you no longer have a sale, people will still think you have a sale... that's marketing."
So is Goh worried about Seah's rising fame and the possibility it would drown out the party's key messages?
To that, he replied Seah and the rest of the candidates in the NSP "complement each other" and that Seah provides "strength to the party" while the rest of the candidates "add on strength to her."
Goh was also quick to point out that the rest of the NSP team have their individual strengths they bring to the table.
"I think people afraid of such things (of one outshining the others) have a lack of self-confidence," he said.
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