Election election results not unexpected, but...

Election election results not unexpected, but...

The recent Singapore General Election gave the ruling party a
solid mandate, but certain nagging issues will not go away. Chua
Beng Huat examines some of these.

SINGAPORE: Throughout 1996, Singaporeans waited for the long-
anticipated General Election (GE). The People's Action Party
(PAP) appeared to be waiting for favorable conditions to prevail
before calling the GE.

Favorable conditions proved elusive because of several issues:
lingering negative public sentiment against high ministerial
wages; cost of living and health-care subsidy issues raised by
the opposition; public discussions regarding purchases of upscale
condominiums by Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Deputy Prime
Minister Lee Hsien Loong; and an economic slowdown in the second
half of the year. In every instance, the Government took effort
to defuse negative public sentiments.

For example, the Cost Review Committee was reconvened to
address public perception regarding the rising cost of living.
This and other efforts paid off in the GE because the opposition
was unable to reignite the same issues, leaving the PAP to define
the main issues during the election campaign.

Before the GE, constituency boundaries were redrawn and Group
Representation Constituencies (GRCs) were expanded. Thus, in
spite of two new seats in the House, making a total of 83, the
number of single-seat constituencies was reduced from 21 to nine.
The redrawn boundaries and the expansion of the GRCs undoubtedly
disadvantaged opposition parties. However, the disadvantages were
not insurmountable and co-ordination among the parties enabled
them to contest in some GRCs.

Parliament was dissolved on Dec. 16 and elections set for Jan.
2, 1997. On Nomination Day, Dec. 23, the PAP lineup included 24
new candidates. Opposition parties contested in all the single-
seat constituencies and six GRCs. Forty-seven of the 83 seats
were uncontested.

Thus, on the same day, the PAP was declared the government for
the next five years. Technically, the so-called "by-election"
strategy of opposition parties could then take effect.

For the past decade, a common sentiment among Singaporeans has
been a desire for more opposition voices in public debate and in
parliament. However, this desire was contained within a competing
desire of wanting the PAP to stay in government. In 1991,
opposition parties concertedly let the PAP win the GE on
Nomination Day, thus satisfying the electorate's latter desire.
They then contested in selected constituencies and encouraged
voters to vote, comfortably, for their other desire for more
opposition voices. The opposition's relatively better showing in
the 1991 GE was attributed to this "by-election" strategy.

The PAP's counter-strategy was to threaten to delay public
housing upgrading plans wherever its candidates were defeated.
Thus, to vote against the PAP was to vote against one's material
self-interest. It was a strategy aimed at displacing the desire
for opposition. Complaints against the unfair use of public funds
to promote its bid for power were dismissed by the PAP leaders as
"naive" and that such use of government resources by the ruling
party was the essence of "realpolitik".

The hottest contested ward was Cheng San GRC, in which the PAP
team faced the Workers' Party team. In the WP team was Tang Liang
Hong, a lawyer with outspoken views about the marginalization of
the Chinese-educated in Singapore's economic success. Each party
sought to make this constituency the bearer of Singapore's
future: the PAP accused Tang of being anti-Christian and anti-
English-educated and projected him as the embodiment of submerged
"Chinese chauvinism" harbored by a section of the Chinese-
educated population.

To emphasis the importance of keeping Tang and what he
allegedly represented out of parliament, Prime Minister Goh Chok
Tong placed himself directly in the Cheng San contest and
promised additional attention to the interest of the voters there
if the PAP won. The WP, on the other hand, placed in the hands of
the same voters the responsibility of keeping alive the people's
rights to a "democratic" polity.

The outcome of the GE was not unexpected. The PAP won all the
seats contested but two and about 65 percent of the total votes
cast. It regained single-seat constituencies which it lost to the
Singapore Democratic Party by very narrow margins in the 1991 GE.
Only the two most popular opposition candidates, Low Thia Kiang
of the WP and Chiam See Tong, founder of the SDP and secretary-
general of the new Singapore People's Party held their seats.

The biggest loser was the SDP. All its candidates were
defeated. It would appear that the public attention which the
candidates received, during the earlier mentioned parliamentary
committee hearings, had turned negative. Their fumbling with
statistics and less-than-forthright answers to questions had
turned better-educated and middle-class voters against them.

The PAP recovered some lost ground. The question is just how
successful was the "vote-for-upgrading" strategy?

First, given the self-interest embedded in the vote-for-
upgrading strategy, it would have been understandable if
Singaporeans were to vote overwhelmingly for the PAP. This was
not so. It gained 4 percentage points more of the total votes
cast, over its 1991 popular base and not the 75 percent it had
held through the 1970s till 1984. The swing towards the PAP was
therefore not overwhelming, unless one assumes that the PAP was
at risk of losing more ground if it had not imposed the
"vote-for-upgrading" strategy. This opinion has certainly been in
the air. However, surveys carried out by researchers at Nanyang
Technological University, between December 1995 and August 1996,
found that consistently only 10 percent of respondents thought
that the PAP would lose more ground, while 30 percent thought it
would gain more ground than in 1991.

Second, it is impossible to estimate the percentage of voters
who were swayed by promises of upgrading. Furthermore, it is
difficult to discern whether they voted for material self-
interest alone. A vote for upgrading need not be based on
unabashed self-interest. Some might have felt that to vote
otherwise was to deprive not only themselves but others in the
community of a better living environment. Undoubtedly, there
would be some who felt "coerced" into voting for the PAP and
became further alienated from the ruling party and the polity.
There were, therefore, multiple sentiments behind each vote even
if voters were swayed by a single issue.

Third, for critics, the "vote-for-upgrading" strategy was a
"slide" from the moral high ground that the PAP had always
claimed for itself. The constant media refrain that the PAP
was engaging in "hard-ball" politics was a euphemism for this
perceived "slide". So too, was the labeling of this strategy as
"pork-barrel" politics.

Also, pushing material self-interest in front of all other
reasons to vote appeared to undercut the "Asian" communitarian
values that are spelt out in the national ideology -- the
Shared Values. Against this moral critique, the PAP's response
that it was merely taking care of its support base remains
unconvincing.

Finally, the "vote-for-upgrading" strategy might have been too
costly a price for the additional margin of popular support.

The issue now is how the priority list for upgrading will be
drawn up. Ironically, Cheng San GRC with the lowest PAP support
(of 55 percent) may end up with the highest priority, in keeping
with the Prime Minister's promise. Where would those walkover
constituencies be placed on the priority list? Furthermore, since
the entire upgrading exercise will take up to 10 years, some
constituencies are going to be disappointed when the next GE
comes around. How the disappointed would cast their ballots then
remains to be seen. The strategy might have succeeded too well
and become indigestible, in implementation.

As for the opposition, parties which offered perceptible
differences from the PAP did better than those which did not.
Thus, the National Solidarity Party, which was most accommodating
of the PAP, did poorly compared with the WP and SDP. This, plus
the "self-sacrifice" implied in voting for the opposition, makes
clear that the desire for opposition voices has neither been
displaced nor dissipated. The 35 percent level for opposition in
the 1996 GE was about all that could be expected as there
certainly was no groundswell of anti-PAP sentiment before the
election.

Associate Professor Chua Beng Huat is with the Department of
Sociology, National University of Singapore.