Democratic gap narrows in
Singapore
By Megawati Wijaya
SINGAPORE - Voters returned the ruling People's Action Party (PAP)
to power on Saturday, giving the long-ruling party 81 seats out of
the 87 parliamentary seats contested. The opposition turned in its
best performance on record, winning nearly 40% of the popular vote
and handing the PAP its poorest showing since the island state
achieved independence in 1965.
A record 2.06 million out of 2.21 million eligible voters went to
the polls in the most widely contested election since 1972. Only
one constituency, the five-member constituency under Minister
Mentor and PAP founder Lee Kuan Yew, went uncontested. In past
polls, many seats went uncontested due to the PAP's
dominance.
"[T]he voters have decided, and I'm honored that they have
once again
entrusted the PAP with a clear mandate to form the next
government," said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, son of former
prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, after the votes were
counted.
During the 2006 polls, only 47 out of 84 seats were contested by
the opposition. The PAP won 66% of the votes in 2006 but notched 82
of parliament's 84 seats due to the group representation
constituency (GRC) system, a controversial scheme where candidates
compete in teams of four to six.
The opposition never won a GRC until Saturday when the Workers'
Party of Singapore (WP), under the charge of its secretary general
Low Thia Khiang, crushed a PAP team led by foreign minister George
Yeo in the five-member GRC in Aljunied. "You have made history
tonight," said Low in a speech to his supporters after his victory.
"This is a political landmark in modern Singapore."
WP also retained its single member constituency (SMC) in Hougang,
thus giving the opposition party six members in parliament. That
will triple the number of opposition members in parliament, raising
new hopes that some alternative voices to the PAP will be heard
during policy discussions.
Five other opposition parties, the Singapore Democratic Party
(SDP), the National Solidarity Party (NSP), the Reform Party (RP),
the Singapore People's Party, and the Singapore Democratic Alliance
(SDA), challenged but failed to beat the PAP in various
constituencies.
Prominent blogger and political observer Alex Au attributed the
WP's relative success to persistent groundwork, strong quality of
candidates and clear party branding. Political analysts will look
to anticipated studies and surveys to answer in more detail why and
in what ways some opposition parties succeeded and others failed at
the polls.
Unhappy voters, stronger opposition
This year's election was set against the backdrop of both strong
economic growth and growing grass roots angst over the rising cost
of living, a high influx of foreign workers, and soaring property
and rental prices.
Pre-election voter surveys are uncommon in Singapore, making it
difficult to statistically gauge the mood of the electorate before
the polls. The city has bounced back from the 2008-9 global
financial crisis, recording 14.5% gross domestic product (GDP)
growth year on year in 2010. But heated debates in on-line forums
and other alternative media revealed rising frustrations among many
Singaporeans.
"I notice a certain restlessness, even restiveness, among different
sections of the people," said veteran editor P N Balji last month.
"Because the government has played a critical role, a womb-to-tomb
role, in people's lives, now there's a boomerang effect. They blame
the government for everything that goes wrong in
Singapore."
Balji coined the term "Orchid Evolution" after the Middle East's
and North Africa's "Jasmine" uprisings to reflect a new angry mood
among Singaporeans, observed in their rising use of social media to
express unhappiness with the government.
Singapore's opposition parties had leveraged this discontent
throughout the nine-day intensive campaign period. Well-attended
rallies of tens of thousands hit on where the government had failed
the people in the past five years.
The WP's last rally held at Serangoon Stadium was estimated to have
drawn 35,000-40,000 people. Pictures posted online played on the
stark comparison of the WP's big crowds and the PAP's less-attended
campaign events.
The election also saw the opposition put up a more united front.
Horse trading took place long before candidates' nomination day,
whereby opposition parties gave way to one another where particular
parties felt their candidates stood the better chance of beating
the PAP candidate in particular constituencies.
This allowed opposition parties with comparatively limited
resources to contest almost all of the constituencies and avoid
three-cornered fights, a scenario that in the past split opposition
votes and benefited the PAP.
"[The oppositions'] guns are pointed in only [one] direction - that
is the PAP," said Socialist Front (SF) secretary-general Chia Ti
Lik in a political forum last December. SF pulled out of the
running before the election, saying that it wanted to avoid causing
three-cornered fights.
One reason for PAP's long dominance has been the historical lack of
strong opposition figures. Analysts say the quality of opposition
candidates was much improved at Saturday's election. For instance,
high flyer civil servant Tan Jee Say, the former principal private
secretary to senior minister Goh Chok Tong, joined the SDP. Former
government scholars Tony Tan and Hazel Poa joined the opposition
NSP, giving its candidacy higher credibility than in the
past.
"Although the opposition lost to PAP in so many constituencies, to
me they are already winning," said cargo coordinator and SDP
supporter Razlan Karzali. "They have improved their performance
compared to the last election."
Barring the SDA, all opposition parties performed better this year
than at the 2006 election, the government-influenced Straits Times
reported. The SDP turned in the most improved performance, winning
an average 39.3% of votes in the areas they contested, up from
23.2% in 2006. WP placed second in improved performance, winning
46.6% in contested constituencies, compared to 38.4% in
2006.
Campaign apology
To be sure, PAP, Singapore's ruling party since 1959, sailed
comfortably to victory at Saturday's poll. The PAP had touted this
year's election as a watershed poll as it forwarded a new
generation of leaders on the ballot. However, several new PAP
candidates had come under fire even before the election campaign
started.
Netizens singled out Janil Puthucheary, a new Singapore citizen
criticized for not doing compulsory national service. A young PAP
candidate, Tin Pei Ling, was criticized for her perceived lack of
media savvy and for allegedly relying on her personal networks
rather than hands-on experience to enter politics.
Several PAP blunders, including the unexplained escape of Jemaah
Islamiyah leader Mas Selamat Kastari from a detention center in
2008 and perceived overspending in the Youth Olympic Games, were
opposition fodder during the campaign. Despite having the upper
hand in deciding the timing of the snap polls and drawing
constituency boundaries, a large part of the campaign saw the PAP
rebuking opposition criticisms rather than touting the success of
party policies.
Perhaps realizing the growing disenchantment among voters, Prime
Minister Lee took a big political gamble halfway through the
campaign. In a rally, he apologized not once, but twice, for the
mistakes his government had made over the past five years,
including for the Mas Selamat escape, floods in the Orchard Road
shopping mall district and overstretched housing and public
transport. He pledged to make adjustments to the system and do
better in a new term.
"When these problems vex you or disturb you or upset your lives,
please bear with us. We're trying our best on your behalf. And if
we didn't quite get it right, I am sorry but we will try and do
better the next time," he said. In the same rally, he said: "I
think you want a government which has a strong mandate but at the
same time is acutely aware that they are servants and not masters,
that they are accountable to the people."
The apologetic speech was widely analyzed on the blogosphere. "The
themes of government accountability and arrogance played so
strongly with the electorate, that the prime minister was compelled
to apologize for the errors of his government late in the campaign.
But it was clearly too little, too late for disenchanted voters,"
former nominated member of parliament Siew Kum Hong wrote in his
blog.
"My own sense is that the middle ground, that big chunk of voters
in the middle who decide the fate of elections, largely approves of
the PAP as the governing party, but had grown to dislike the PAP
and its style," he wrote.
Cherian George, political observer and associate professor at the
Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at the Nanyang
Technological University, wrote that Lee's apologies "potentially
signals nothing less than a new compact, a recasting of the
relationship between the PAP and the people."
"If he had then turned defensive and declared that the PAP had
already delivered such a government, he would have lost me," wrote
George. "Instead, he said: ‘That's the kind of government which we
would like to be able to [form] from this election.' The sub-text:
there is room for improvement; my next government will embody these
principles in a way that my previous ones did not," wrote
George.
PAP apologies aside, there is no illusion that the current
opposition is poised to take power any time soon. WP candidates
consistently hammered the message that it wanted to be a check and
balance for the PAP and its dominance over government.
"If Singaporeans were to throw out the PAP government, which other
parties could come in and govern at this point in time?" WP
chairwoman Sylvia Lim said in March. She conceded that "The WP is
not ready to do that now."
Clearly many voters agree. "You
see how developed Singapore is now? You see how prosperous this
country is? PAP is the best political party, not only in Singapore,
they are the best in the world," said Leo Chin Kuan, a taxi driver.
"After this election, PAP will surely change for the better. They
know the whole electorate has changed ... They have realized how
powerful the voters are."
Megawati Wijaya is a Singapore-based
journalist. She may be contacted
at [email protected]
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