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.