Analyzing election rallies in S'pore

Analyzing election rallies in S'pore

By Derek da Cunha

What you don't see or hear could well be more significant than what you do.

SINGAPORE: One of the talking points during Singapore's recent nine-day election campaign was the size of crowds at the rallies organized by the various political parties. Many people remarked that, contrary to popular belief, Singaporeans were far from an apathetic lot, judging by the numbers flocking to the rallies.

Even Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew commented on the issue, a day before Polling Day, when he said that he was not intimidated by the large crowds at Workers' Party rallies, recalling that on two occasions in the early 1960s the opposition Barisan Socialis drew up to 150,000 people at its rallies, whereas PAP rallies attracted merely one-tenth that number.

Yet, despite that, the PAP won the 1962 referendum on merger with Malaysia and the 1963 general election.

On the other hand, the day after Polling Day, the Secretary- General of the Workers' Party, Mr. J B Jeyaretnam, lamented precisely this very disjunction between the huge crowds at Workers' Party rallies and the actual results of the election. He said: "It is very difficult for us to understand how they could come to our rallies and show their total agreement to what we were saying and then come Polling Day there is a change." Indeed, why the disjunction?

Answering that question means trying to understand what one might call "the anatomy of election rallies".

In most Western countries, election rallies tend to draw the party faithful and are largely intended for a television audience.

In Singapore, however, most rallies draw a spectrum of people with diverse political persuasions. And, for the opposition in particular, rallies are a major part of an election campaign intended for a party -- which has been relatively inactive between elections -- to get its message across to voters. With this phenomenon taking place only during a nine-day period once every four or five years, it tends to generate a great deal of curiosity in even the most apolitical of Singaporeans.

Being a social and political observer of a completely disinterested persuasion, but one with an ardor and avidity in search of knowledge, I resolved to follow the election campaign mainly through the rubric of the rallies. The first thing that dawned on me when attending the rallies is that being 6 feet 2 inches (1.87 m) tall has distinct advantages -- you observe not just the speakers on the podium but, perhaps more importantly, the many people around you, who make up the anatomy of a rally.

In terms of crowd profile, the PAP rallies tended to draw people who appeared to be overwhelmingly PAP sympathizers, with many apparently being trades union members (not surprising since a number of unionists were standing on the PAP ticket). And, as such, these rallies seemed like exercises analogous to besieging an open fortress. Perhaps recognizing that fact, the PAP has traditionally given less weight to rallies and more to personal contact with voters through house-to-house visits.

In gender profile, the rallies of all the political parties tended to draw appreciably more men than women. This might only partially reflect the relatively greater political awareness of men (a view which some might well contest). It might also have been due to the sometimes less than ideal conditions: a muddy, uneven ground and prospects of a December downpour do tend to be a bit of a deterrent to the fairer sex.

In socioeconomic profile, it seemed that the Workers' Party, especially in its rallies for Cheng San GRC, drew relatively more working-class people (or those at the lower end of the social strata) than was apparent in the rallies of the other political parties. And this is perhaps significant, for the question here is whether such a crowd profile fits the profile of the average Cheng San voter. Whatever the answer, clearly a vast number of people from other constituencies, contested and uncontested, descended on the Workers' Party rally sites at Yio Chu Kang Stadium and Hougang Stadium.

The Singapore Democratic Party's rallies, on the other hand, appeared to attract a bit more people from the younger, trendier set, what one might call the yuppie section of the middle class.

Finally, in terms of ethnic composition, all the rallies of the political parties drew people from the three main ethnic groups. It is, however, difficult to say whether this matched their national percentages.

It was quite clear that some proportion of the people who had attended the rallies were there purely for their entertainment value (with the nightly diet on TCS' channels 5 and 8 apparently providing not much competition). And some of the parties did not disappoint. Right on cue, you had the "spontaneous" garlanding of an election candidate, with someone walking onto the stage to do the honors to rapturous applause.

Entertainment aside, opposition rallies also witnessed some people giving vent to certain frustrations or grievances. As speakers on the podium tried to win over the audience with muscular reassertions of the party line, occasionally someone from the crowd -- gratifying the passion of the moment -- would suddenly shout out an anti-PAP slogan and part of the crowd would roar its hearty approval. Anonymity amidst a sea of people tends to have a transformative effect on the otherwise taciturn individual.

Different speakers had different styles and different effects on their audience. Listening to the Senior Minister speak at Boat Quay about his memory of the place going back not 20 years, but 50 years, when local lawyers were housed in "rabbit warrens" in low-rise buildings, while their British counterparts were in taller buildings, brought a historical perspective to someone like myself, born in the glow of a burgeoning Singaporean national consciousness.

Then there was the nimble-minded Dr. Wong Wee Nam of the National Solidarity Party, who impressed with his expansive delivery and linguistic versatility, switching back and forth from English to Mandarin every few minutes.

For emotionally-charged speeches, few could match those delivered by SDP chief Dr. Chee Soon Juan. In his last rally at MacPherson on Dec. 31, Dr. Chee tried to focus the minds of his audience on the fact that after Jan. 2 his life would not be the same again. This was the sympathy play, pure and simple.

I could not help thinking that here was a man whom many felt had turned the SDP from a moderate political party into one which had become reckless and unnecessarily confrontational. And now he was appealing to the voters to help save him from electoral defeat because, one way or another, his life would not be the same again after Polling Day.

As he began to wind up his speech, Dr. Chee asked his audience whether they would vote for him. "Yes", came the answer from a section of the crowd. "I can't hear you", Chee retorted. "Yes", came the louder answer. "I still can't hear you", he said. Louder still was the affirmative reply, but not by much.

As I was leaving this scene of crowd-speaker interaction -- feeling half amused -- I happened to hear a young man who was nearby make a perceptive observation to his lady companion, "Less than half say yes". How prophetic! A salutary example of the silent majority, no less.

If there is a moral to all this, it seems to be that one should not take election rallies too seriously as they tend to merely widen the gulf between wishful thinking and reality. But if you do insist on taking rallies seriously, it would be advisable not to place too much credence on crowd size (which is not necessarily a barometer of a party's popularity); instead, look at the fine detail, like the crowd's body-language, or lack thereof. What you don't see or hear could well be more significant than what you do.

Dr. Derek da Cunha is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore and Editor of Trends. This article is part of a monograph he is writing on the general election.