Election election results not unexpected, but...<\/p>\n
The recent Singapore General Election gave the ruling party a
\nsolid mandate, but certain nagging issues will not go away. Chua
\nBeng Huat examines some of these.<\/p>\n
SINGAPORE: Throughout 1996, Singaporeans waited for the long-
\nanticipated General Election (GE). The People's Action Party
\n(PAP) appeared to be waiting for favorable conditions to prevail
\nbefore calling the GE.<\/p>\n
Favorable conditions proved elusive because of several issues:
\nlingering negative public sentiment against high ministerial
\nwages; cost of living and health-care subsidy issues raised by
\nthe opposition; public discussions regarding purchases of upscale
\ncondominiums by Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Deputy Prime
\nMinister Lee Hsien Loong; and an economic slowdown in the second
\nhalf of the year. In every instance, the Government took effort
\nto defuse negative public sentiments.<\/p>\n
For example, the Cost Review Committee was reconvened to
\naddress public perception regarding the rising cost of living.
\nThis and other efforts paid off in the GE because the opposition
\nwas unable to reignite the same issues, leaving the PAP to define
\nthe main issues during the election campaign.<\/p>\n
Before the GE, constituency boundaries were redrawn and Group
\nRepresentation Constituencies (GRCs) were expanded. Thus, in
\nspite of two new seats in the House, making a total of 83, the
\nnumber of single-seat constituencies was reduced from 21 to nine.
\nThe redrawn boundaries and the expansion of the GRCs undoubtedly
\ndisadvantaged opposition parties. However, the disadvantages were
\nnot insurmountable and co-ordination among the parties enabled
\nthem to contest in some GRCs.<\/p>\n
Parliament was dissolved on Dec. 16 and elections set for Jan.
\n2, 1997. On Nomination Day, Dec. 23, the PAP lineup included 24
\nnew candidates. Opposition parties contested in all the single-
\nseat constituencies and six GRCs. Forty-seven of the 83 seats
\nwere uncontested.<\/p>\n
Thus, on the same day, the PAP was declared the government for
\nthe next five years. Technically, the so-called \"by-election\"
\nstrategy of opposition parties could then take effect.<\/p>\n
For the past decade, a common sentiment among Singaporeans has
\nbeen a desire for more opposition voices in public debate and in
\nparliament. However, this desire was contained within a competing
\ndesire of wanting the PAP to stay in government. In 1991,
\nopposition parties concertedly let the PAP win the GE on
\nNomination Day, thus satisfying the electorate's latter desire.
\nThey then contested in selected constituencies and encouraged
\nvoters to vote, comfortably, for their other desire for more
\nopposition voices. The opposition's relatively better showing in
\nthe 1991 GE was attributed to this \"by-election\" strategy.<\/p>\n
The PAP's counter-strategy was to threaten to delay public
\nhousing upgrading plans wherever its candidates were defeated.
\nThus, to vote against the PAP was to vote against one's material
\nself-interest. It was a strategy aimed at displacing the desire
\nfor opposition. Complaints against the unfair use of public funds
\nto promote its bid for power were dismissed by the PAP leaders as
\n\"naive\" and that such use of government resources by the ruling
\nparty was the essence of \"realpolitik\".<\/p>\n
The hottest contested ward was Cheng San GRC, in which the PAP
\nteam faced the Workers' Party team. In the WP team was Tang Liang
\nHong, a lawyer with outspoken views about the marginalization of
\nthe Chinese-educated in Singapore's economic success. Each party
\nsought to make this constituency the bearer of Singapore's
\nfuture: the PAP accused Tang of being anti-Christian and anti-
\nEnglish-educated and projected him as the embodiment of submerged
\n\"Chinese chauvinism\" harbored by a section of the Chinese-
\neducated population.<\/p>\n
To emphasis the importance of keeping Tang and what he
\nallegedly represented out of parliament, Prime Minister Goh Chok
\nTong placed himself directly in the Cheng San contest and
\npromised additional attention to the interest of the voters there
\nif the PAP won. The WP, on the other hand, placed in the hands of
\nthe same voters the responsibility of keeping alive the people's
\nrights to a \"democratic\" polity.<\/p>\n
The outcome of the GE was not unexpected. The PAP won all the
\nseats contested but two and about 65 percent of the total votes
\ncast. It regained single-seat constituencies which it lost to the
\nSingapore Democratic Party by very narrow margins in the 1991 GE.
\nOnly the two most popular opposition candidates, Low Thia Kiang
\nof the WP and Chiam See Tong, founder of the SDP and secretary-
\ngeneral of the new Singapore People's Party held their seats.<\/p>\n
The biggest loser was the SDP. All its candidates were
\ndefeated. It would appear that the public attention which the
\ncandidates received, during the earlier mentioned parliamentary
\ncommittee hearings, had turned negative. Their fumbling with
\nstatistics and less-than-forthright answers to questions had
\nturned better-educated and middle-class voters against them.<\/p>\n
The PAP recovered some lost ground. The question is just how
\nsuccessful was the \"vote-for-upgrading\" strategy?<\/p>\n
First, given the self-interest embedded in the vote-for-
\nupgrading strategy, it would have been understandable if
\nSingaporeans were to vote overwhelmingly for the PAP. This was
\nnot so. It gained 4 percentage points more of the total votes
\ncast, over its 1991 popular base and not the 75 percent it had
\nheld through the 1970s till 1984. The swing towards the PAP was
\ntherefore not overwhelming, unless one assumes that the PAP was
\nat risk of losing more ground if it had not imposed the
\n\"vote-for-upgrading\" strategy. This opinion has certainly been in
\nthe air. However, surveys carried out by researchers at Nanyang
\nTechnological University, between December 1995 and August 1996,
\nfound that consistently only 10 percent of respondents thought
\nthat the PAP would lose more ground, while 30 percent thought it
\nwould gain more ground than in 1991.<\/p>\n
Second, it is impossible to estimate the percentage of voters
\nwho were swayed by promises of upgrading. Furthermore, it is
\ndifficult to discern whether they voted for material self-
\ninterest alone. A vote for upgrading need not be based on
\nunabashed self-interest. Some might have felt that to vote
\notherwise was to deprive not only themselves but others in the
\ncommunity of a better living environment. Undoubtedly, there
\nwould be some who felt \"coerced\" into voting for the PAP and
\nbecame further alienated from the ruling party and the polity.
\nThere were, therefore, multiple sentiments behind each vote even
\nif voters were swayed by a single issue.<\/p>\n
Third, for critics, the \"vote-for-upgrading\" strategy was a
\n\"slide\" from the moral high ground that the PAP had always
\nclaimed for itself. The constant media refrain that the PAP
\nwas engaging in \"hard-ball\" politics was a euphemism for this
\nperceived \"slide\". So too, was the labeling of this strategy as
\n\"pork-barrel\" politics.<\/p>\n
Also, pushing material self-interest in front of all other
\nreasons to vote appeared to undercut the \"Asian\" communitarian
\nvalues that are spelt out in the national ideology -- the
\nShared Values. Against this moral critique, the PAP's response
\nthat it was merely taking care of its support base remains
\nunconvincing.<\/p>\n
Finally, the \"vote-for-upgrading\" strategy might have been too
\ncostly a price for the additional margin of popular support.<\/p>\n
The issue now is how the priority list for upgrading will be
\ndrawn up. Ironically, Cheng San GRC with the lowest PAP support
\n(of 55 percent) may end up with the highest priority, in keeping
\nwith the Prime Minister's promise. Where would those walkover
\nconstituencies be placed on the priority list? Furthermore, since
\nthe entire upgrading exercise will take up to 10 years, some
\nconstituencies are going to be disappointed when the next GE
\ncomes around. How the disappointed would cast their ballots then
\nremains to be seen. The strategy might have succeeded too well
\nand become indigestible, in implementation.<\/p>\n
As for the opposition, parties which offered perceptible
\ndifferences from the PAP did better than those which did not.
\nThus, the National Solidarity Party, which was most accommodating
\nof the PAP, did poorly compared with the WP and SDP. This, plus
\nthe \"self-sacrifice\" implied in voting for the opposition, makes
\nclear that the desire for opposition voices has neither been
\ndisplaced nor dissipated. The 35 percent level for opposition in
\nthe 1996 GE was about all that could be expected as there
\ncertainly was no groundswell of anti-PAP sentiment before the
\nelection.<\/p>\n
Associate Professor Chua Beng Huat is with the Department of
\nSociology, National University of Singapore.<\/p>",
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