More of the Same

 

When will the day come?

I’ve generally stayed out of commenting on this year’s election in Singapore. Although Singapore is my home and as often said, the only country on the planet I actually have a legal and moral obligation to die for, I just didn’t feel fired up enough to talk about the election.

Let’s start with the obvious, you know the results before the vote is even counted. The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) has won every election since independence and they’re known to use every trick in the book to ensure that they go into the election with every possible advantage. This was clearly seen in the drawing of electoral boundaries prior to the election. So, it should be no surprise that the ruling party cruised home with a comfortable victory, taking 87 out a possible 97 seats.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-votes-test-ruling-partys-monopoly-2025-05-03/

 

 The continued dominance of the ruling party “p****es” off plenty of opposition politicians for the simple reason that despite the complaints about life in Singapore, the ruling party keeps coming back in. One of the most famous grouses about Singapore’s elections came in 2015 when the Secretary General of the Reform Party, Mr. Kenneth Jeyaratnam who told the electorate to stop complaining:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETnYp0CIDxI

 

 As with our elections in 2020, 2015 and 2011, the excitement was generated by the opposition rather than the ruling party. Managed to eavesdrop on a conversation in the coffee shop near the office, and the point was made very clearly was the fact that the opposition party politicians seemed to have “passion,” whilst the candidates from the ruling party seemed to be reading from a script with as much passion as watching grass grow. There was even the contest of prettiest politicians where Ms. Alexis Dang of the Worker’s Party went up against Ms. Sun Xueling of the ruling party:

 https://theindependent.sg/the-battle-for-punggol-alexis-dang-vs-sun-xueling/

 

 While the opposition parties, specifically the Worker’s Party, have been attracting very talented and capable people, the truth remains that “Elections are not won by opposition but lost by governments.”

At the end of the day, the ruling party had not done enough to lose the election. Leaving aside the fact that the ruling party has the levers of power at its control, the fact remains that complaints about the ruling party like rising prices are pretty much the same complaint that everyone else in the world has. When I talk about how expensive things are becoming, my siblings in the UK and USA mention exactly the same thing and the American family points out that populist politics hasn’t exactly made life better.

So, the fact remains that Singaporeans do want the ruling party there but what we want is for the government to be reminded that they work for us and not the other way round. So, for years, we kept two opposition members there (Chiam See Tong and Low Thia Kiang) despite the obvious “incentives” to kick them out. Then in 2011 and 2020, when we felt the government wasn’t listening hard enough, we gave two Group Representative Constituencies (GRC – a case where you vote for a team of MPs rather than a single MPs) to the opposition Worker’s Party. If you look at the guys in light blue shirts (Colour of the Worker’s Party, which differs from the White of the ruling party), you’ll find that their policies aren’t that far off from what’s already there, a fact that other opposition parties often complain about.

You could say that voting for the opposition is more about reminding the ruling party to be less condescending in their public appearances than actual disagreements.

So, how long can this status quo last? It depends on two things, which will need to coincide. The first is decay in the ruling party. The ruling party has yet to elect a leader as corrupt and incompetent as Mr. Najib Razak in neighboring Malaysia.  However, the infamous “Ownself-Check-Ownself” that the ruling party often uses whenever the question of accountability arises, the possibility of producing a leader that corrupt cannot be ruled out.

The second thing that needs to happen is when the opposition produces a team that shows its capable of running things. Thus far only the Worker’s Party has a record of running things. The frustration among the ruling party’s members it that once a constituency “goes blue” there’s literally no going back. The reason was explained as the fact that the guys in blue manage to keep cost and quality the same whereas cost tend to rise in the constituencies run by the guys in white.

As things stand, the Worker’s Party is aware that it isn’t in the position to take over the government. However, its building with what it has. The Worker’s Party is focused on maintaining seats in parliament and then acquiring seats rather than getting media attention. As such, it remains the only possible party to offer an alternative.

Its probably an eventuality when Singapore’s elections become more “normal.” Dominant parties like the Kuomintang in Taiwan, UMNO in Malaysia and the PRI in Mexico have tasted defeat at the ballot box, so there’s no reason why the PAP in Singapore won’t one of these days. However, that day remains yet to come as long as the PAP uses its mandate to work for the people.