Singapore GE : Lessons For Us
By Syed Akbar Ali
Well the winds of change are certainly blowing in Singapore. When the electorate is well educated, well informed and not religiously screwed up, they tend to vote more wisely. The PAP has actually had a close call. Clearly, support for the PAP is on its way down. Yesterday the PAP won only 60.4% of popular votes, down from 67% in their 2006 elections.
Here is a pattern. Where the PAP won, some of its victories were razor thin. Where the PAP lost, it has lost big too. Here are some numbers:
In Potong Pasir, the PAP defeated opposition veteran Chiam See Tong by 114 votes only, a 0.7 per cent winning margin – a razor thin win.
In the Joo Chiat SMC the PAP won by just 382 Votes – another razor thin win. The PAP won 51.01% beating the Workers’ Party which had 48.99% of the votes. In the 2006 General Election, the PAP candidate won 65.01% of votes against the WP’s 34.99%.
In Bishan – Toa Payoh GRC the PAP’s Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng was challenged (for the first time since the GRC was formed in 1997). The PAP won 56.9% of votes (62,282 votes) while the Singapore People’s Party (SPP) received 47,092 votes (43.1 %). That’s not bad for the SPP’s first time outing against a Deputy Prime Minister in Bishan. Watch out PAP.
When the PAP lost to the Worker’s Party in Hougang, the margin was big – 29.6%. The WP candidate secured 14,833 votes (64.8%) while the PAP took 8,053 votes (35.2%).
In the Al Juneid GRC, the WP defeated the PAP by over 12,000 votes (over 9% margin). What is more interesting is that in the Al Juneid GRC, the PAP “lost” three Cabinet Ministers. Long serving Foreign Minister George Yeo was defeated, as well as Senior Minister Zainul Abidin Rasheed who was slated to be Speaker of Parliament. And one Ms Lim Hwee Hua, also a Cabinet Minister.
They lost to Worker’s Party candidates : Pritam Singh, Mohd Faisal Abdul Manap, Chen Show Mao, Sylvia Lim and WP’s strongman Low Thia Kiang.
Considering that a Punjabi, a Malay plus a woman – this was a really minority ticket – defeated a tenured Foreign Minister, a Senior Minister and another Cabinet Minister, it shows that Singaporeans are quite fed up with some of their Jurassic Park Cabinet Ministers.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien long has said : ‘We understand in the PAP that this election is a watershed election, and we have to adapt to this new situation and (find) policies and approaches which will work with this new electorate’
The lesson for the Barisan Nasional in Malaysia here is quite simple : In Singapore, people want the stability and the economic successes of the PAP to continue but they also want to see new faces. When the same old faces turned up from the PAP, the people voted new faces from the Opposition.
