S'pore polls left scars, opposition leader says

S'pore polls left scars, opposition leader says

SINGAPORE (Reuter): The obsession of the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) with dominating Singapore politics has revived old fears and left scars in the minds of voters, a senior opposition figure said yesterday.

"Singaporeans were treated to a spectacle of a government dominated with just one obsession", that of having "absolute control over the lives of Singaporeans", said Joshua Jeyaretnam, secretary general of the leftist Workers' Party.

"That spectacle has left scars in the mind of many Singaporeans," Jeyaretnam told the local Foreign Correspondents Association.

"They saw the government revealed stark naked in the length it would go to hold on to power in Singapore," he said.

Jeyaretnam led a five-man slate that lost a bitter contest with the PAP for the multi-member, winner-take-all constituency of Cheng San in the Jan. 2 general election.

"The underlying mechanism for control is fear. It was fear in the mind of Cheng San voters that if they voted for the opposition they would not get the upgrading, they would not get the MRT (mass rapid transport system), LRT (light rail transportation), the new town," Jeyaretnam said.

The PAP also said it would know how much support it got from public housing precincts as small as those with 5,000 voters, he said.

"So their mind was no longer free. It was no longer a free and fair vote," Jeyaretnam said.

Jeyaretnam said he was not accusing the PAP of checking how people voted individually and was sure it did not, but added: "Singapore society is such that you only got to suggest the fear and it works beautifully."

In Cheng San, the PAP won 55 percent of the vote, below its national average of 65 percent, which allowed Jeyaretnam into parliament as the "best loser" of the elections under Singapore laws. He will be one of three opposition MPs to 81 for the PAP.

The opposition secured its first election victory since independence in 1965 when Jeyaretnam won a seat in 1981. He was re-elected in 1984, then lost in 1986 when he was disqualified by a conviction on charges of making false statements about his party's accounts.

Jeyaretnam said yesterday that opposition political parties find it hard to grow in Singapore.

Finding candidates was difficult, he said. "We simply couldn't get people in... People whom we would like to have enrolled as candidates were saying 'no way, after seeing what happened to you. You must think we are fools'."

Another problem was getting people to contribute to the opposition, he said. "We are cash strapped."