ABSTRACT
On the night of 11 September 2015, pundits, journalists, political bloggers, academics, and others in Singapore’s chattering classes watched in long-drawn amazement as the media reported excitedly on the results of independent Singapore’s twelfth parliamentary elections that trickled in until the very early hours of the morning. It became increasingly clear as the night wore on, and any optimism for change wore off, that the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) had swept the votes in something of a landslide victory that would have puzzled even the PAP itself (Zakir, 2015). In the 2015 general elections (GE2015), the incumbent party won 69.9 per cent of the total votes (see Table 1.1). The Workers’ Party (WP), the leading opposition party that had five elected members in the previous parliament, lost their Punggol East seat in 2015 with 48.2 per cent of the votes cast in that single-member constituency (SMC). With 51 per cent of the votes, the WP was able to hold on to Aljunied, a five-member group representation constituency (GRC), by a very slim margin of less than 2 per cent. It was also able to hold on to Hougang SMC with a more convincing win of 57.7 per cent. However, it was undoubtedly a hard defeat for the opposition. The strong performance by the PAP bucked the trend observed since GE2001, when it had won 75.3 per cent of the total votes, the highest percentage since independence. In GE2006, this dropped to 66.6 per cent. In GE2011, it dropped even further to 60.1 per cent, the PAP’s worst performance since Singapore gained independence. The PAP lost Aljunied GRC to the opposition and, as a result, two high-profile senior politicians, Foreign Affairs Minister George Yeo and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Lim Hwee Hua, lost their seats. This downward trend was even more significant when considered in the context of a rising trend in the percentage of overall seats that were contested: in GE2001, opposition parties fielded candidates in only 35 per cent of the seats; in GE2006, it was 56 per cent; and in GE2011, this percentage rose to 94 per cent. Thus, in GE2015, when 100 per cent of the seats were contested, there was every expectation that the PAP would only manage to win the election with a much smaller margin. Two by-elections followed GE2011. The first, in 2012, was called when Yaw Shing Leong, WP Member of Parliament (MP) for Hougang, was expelled from
the party, following rumours that he had had an extramarital affair with a party member. In the by-election on 26 May 2012, WP candidate Png Eng Huat beat the PAP candidate Desmond Choo with a percentage of 62.1. Yaw had won the SMC in GE2011 with 64.8 per cent of the votes. In 2013, PAP MP for Punggol East and Speaker of Parliament Michael Palmer also resigned as the result of an extramarital affair. WP candidate Lee Li Lian, who had lost Punggol East with 41.1 per cent of the votes in GE2011, won it in the by-election on 26 January 2013 with 54.5 per cent, beating the PAP candidate Koh Poh Koon by more than 10 per cent of the votes. These results signalled a rise in the fortunes of the opposition. The WP was able to recruit highly credentialed candidates, engage deeply with the constituency grassroots, and impose a tightly disciplined management style that paid attention to public communications and party branding. More than any other opposition party, the WP was able to ‘bridge the credibility gap’ (Ong and Tim, 2014). GE2011 seemed to mark the start of a ‘new normal’, a time when the ruling party could expect tougher criticism and more compelling challenges from opposition parties, civil society groups, and private citizens. Singapore’s usually placid civil society was starting to be populated by more articulate and politically sophisticated advocacy groups, alongside the usually timid private interest and civic outreach groups. Public intellectuals were emerging to provide ideological leadership, often of a counterhegemonic nature. More widespread popular participation in social media had amplified their consciousness-raising powers. All these signs seemed to suggest that Singapore had been moving slowly but surely along the trajectory of liberal democratization. Thus, the PAP landslide victory and the opposition’s crushing defeat in 2015 were a puzzle to many. The media and several political watchers were understandably quick to describe this as a national swing back to the PAP, pointing to an immanent collapse of the opposition. Should GE2015 be seen as evidence that weakens the liberal democratization thesis by confirming Singapore’s exceptional nature? Does Singapore’s political development take on a cyclical rather than linear form? Or should GE2015 be regarded as a glitch in time, which will soon yield to the inevitable logic and force of political liberalization? In an attempt to solve this puzzle – and to plot plausible democratic trajectories into Singapore’s future – a good start would be to analyse the possible reasons behind votes for and against the PAP and votes for and against the opposition.
