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.