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/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETnYp0CIDxI
https://theindependent.sg/the-battle-for-punggol-alexis-dang-vs-sun-xueling/
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.