Hi,
Firstly, basic knowledge of politics and governance is not privy to
people of high paper qualifications; anyone can become an expert in
it because at the end of the day, it is merely theory.
I would like to express my personal "theory":
Whether a parliament has zero opposition is alright or otherwise
depends on individuals and the kind of systems the country has.
Singaporeans appear to mind less than, say, a Brit, American or
Thai.
However, there are implications of it for a democracy.
Theoretically, democracy means about the right of people making a
choice.
A party that wins everything causes the survival of other parties
to be at stake and hampers their build-up and this in turn
discourages competition and leads to walkovers.
In my view, elections with walkovers mean lesser people get to
exercise their choice and almost rids the purpose of having an
elections. For this, all seats have to be contested and this role
ends up in the opposition's plate. Activists and renowned bloggers
can neither block the ruling party's power nor do they wish
to.
However, for all the desire opposition parties have, limited
success increases their difficulty in getting good people to join
them and become candidates, causing the walkovers.
It is a vicious cycle, as I have wrote in an article in 2005:
http://melvintansg.blogspot.com/2005/03/vote-for-chance-to-vote-again.html
There are almost no examples in the world of zero opposition in a
democracy. Effectively, even Singapore has 3 opposition MPs.
Regards
