He stood as the candidate of the governing People's Action Party (PAP) in the Anson by-election in 1981.
[1][2] The 1981 by-election in the constituency of Anson was called when Devan Nair stepped down from Parliament to become President of Singapore.
[3] He faced Jeyaretnam, who had previously stood in three general elections and two by-elections in Singapore (though he had never been a candidate in Anson before), and Harbans Singh of the United People's Front.
Another factor may have been that Pang did not make use of Anson's grassroots leaders during his campaign, upsetting some of them, and that he did not connect effectively with working-class people in the constituency.
Another issue surrounding the campaign was that residents in the Blair Plain area of the constituency were unhappy that they were not being given priority for HDB flats when their homes were being demolished to make way for a new Port of Singapore Authority container complex.