“WHAT a wonderful, amazing win by the People’s Action Party (PAP),” Singapore’s former Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Zainul Abidin Rasheed WhatsApped early yesterday morning.
The ruling party has returned to power in the island republic’s general election as expected but with a far larger share of the popular votes – 69.9%, up from 60.1% in 2011 and even surpassing 66.6% in the 2006 polls.
It has won a big mandate from the 2.46 million eligible voters, clinching 83 out of 89 seats in 29 constituencies. For the first time since independence in 1965, all seats were contested.
PAP’s big victory has delivered a blow to the opposition, which had hoped to clinch more seats after their unprecendented wins in the 2011 polls.
The Workers’ Party (WP), the main opposition, has fielded 28 candidates this year with its secretary-general Low Thia Khiang saying that there should be at least 20 opposition MPs. Based on rally turnouts and support during walkabouts, they have certainly expected more.
Zainul Abidin has been part of the PAP team which lost the Aljunied Group Representation Constituency to WP in the last election – the first time the ruling party lost a GRC. In this year’s polls, WP retained that constituency by 51%, down from 54.7% in 2011.
The party also managed to retain its Hougang Single Member Constituency but lost the Punggol East SMC, which it gained in a by-election.
“It was a reality check, mainly for the opposition and those hoping things would move towards a multi-party democracy,” says Singapore Democratic Party’s (SDP) Professor Paul Tambyah, part of the team which contested against and lost to PAP in the Holland-Bukit Timah GRC.
“The odds are really stacked against the opposition.”
Civil servants and many working in statutory bodies and government-linked companies, he notes, have been given a S$500 bonus (RM1,515) in conjunction with the republic’s 50th anniversary of independence just before the elections.
He also points to a “fear factor” that votes could be traced.
“We kept emphasising that the vote was secret but when we did focus groups, the majority in every demographic didn’t believe that their vote was secret,” Tambyah says.
While the opposition is left to dwell on the results and what this holds for the future, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has described the overall outcome as a good result for his party and “an excellent result for Singapore”.
During his party’s campaign, Lee talked about leadership renewal and Singapore’s fourth generation leaders, and pledged to reshuffle his Cabinet soon so that younger faces could be put into positions of responsibility.
Lee has also said that he plans to retire by 2020.
In Aljunied, Zainal says that although PAP lost by a wafer-thin margin, “it has practically recovered much of the lost ground”.
He attributes these gains to the Aljunied Town Council issue, “the personal popularity and goodwill for Prime Minister Lee and ‘tribute’ to the late founding PM, Lee Kuan Yew”.
The Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol East town council came under the spotlight earlier this year after questions were raised over its payment to managing agent FM Solutions and Services, owned by WP’s long-term supporters, and whether the company had actually been overpaid.
Aljunied PAP candidate Chua Eng Leong, an investment banker, sees a positive shift.
Visits by the Prime Minister, Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam to his constituency has helped, he reckons, as did those by Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean and the Speaker of Parliament, Halimah Yacob.
At the national level, Chua thinks that voters “felt that the PAP government has listened to them and that was our campaign strategy”.
PAP’s returning West Coast MP Patrick Tay sees the results as an endorsement “of PAP for what it has done for the past four and a half years, and its plans for Singapore and Singaporeans in the next five years”.
“We must constantly stay in touch with the ground and remain humble to accept diversity of views and continue to do more, do good, do well and do together with fellow Singaporeans,” Tay says.
Dr Cherian George, associate professor with Hong Kong Baptist University’s journalism department, says PAP seems to have done enough since the 2011 election to address its earlier policy failures and missteps.
He says it probably enjoys “a bounce from the outpouring of nationalist sentiment” after the death of the senior Lee in March and the independence celebrationlast month.
For example, PAP has tackled the problem of peak-period crowding on buses with a S$1.1bil (RM3.33bil) Bus Service Enhancement Programme by putting 1,000 government-funded buses on the roads.
SDP’s Tambyah says that credit has to be given to PAP for “making the effort to respond to the major issues in the 2011 elections, most obviously housing, where they have dealt with the backlog of people waiting”.
“The waitlist has disappeared,” he adds.
PAP’s government has also addressed healthcare issues by launching two schemes: one for seniors, which Tambyah says was “time-limited”, and an attempt at health insurance called Medishield Life, which he claims “has a lot of holes”.
The PAP’s last 36 hours of messaging worked, says Dr Alan Chong, associate professor at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
Talk about “conditions around Asean and the roiling of stock markets resonated with voters,” he says.
“Those who were going to swing to the opposition thought it was not worth it.”
The PAP government, Dr Chong adds, has also succeeded in bringing in the next generation of leaders and has its mandate to carry on with globalisation-friendly policies.
He hopes this will continue to improve in the areas raised by the opposition, including transport issues and the influx of foreign labour.
“On paper, it is a thumping mandate but if you look at what all the parties have been saying, there are serious issues which have yet to be addressed.”
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