Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP) finally dropped the bombshell of a May 3 election date on April 15, permitting a campaign period of a mere 9 days as it leaves opposition parties scrambling in an uphill fight heavily skewed with advantages for the ruling party.
Besides the long-standing tease of an opaque election date, a committee, reportedly overseen by the Prime Minister’s Office, has diligently drawn up electoral boundaries a month prior as part of the ruling party’s playbook. The result of which is diluted support for opposition parties as voters in districts perceived as politically threatening are split up and shoved into constituencies with larger populations of ruling party voters. This electoral trick is nothing new and is rightfully termed gerrymandering elsewhere.
But that’s not all; there’s also the GRC (Group Representative Constituency) scheme, where multi-member constituencies are contested by political teams of three to six candidates. Although marketed as a safeguard for minority representation, this one-man-wins-all plurality voting system enables the individual with the highest votes to collect the entire constituency for the team. In other words, the ruling party needs only to field one strong candidate in each GRC to secure multiple seats by way of parachuting their newbies. Despite the glaring flaw of disproportionality, the scheme is here to stay—as long as PAP does—because it has observably secured the ruling party more seats than it would have under a traditional single-member system.
Last but not least, PAP also has the backing of the state media, the auspicious recipient of a $900 million boost—generously funded by everyday taxpayers, no less. However, as if that’s not enough, the state-funded paper of record, The Straits Times, took to hyper-inflating circulation numbers in a manner as unsophisticated as the one supervising it—by printing copies, counting them, and destroying them thereafter along with the trees they sacrificed. In a style that heavily mimicked the dead collecting Social Security benefits as uncovered by DOGE in the United States, the state agency reportedly had a project account set up to “purchase fictitious circulation.”
Despite the stacked advantages and incumbent bonuses, Singapore’s PAP encountered its biggest loss in the 2020 election, and this oily downhill slope is looking more slippery than ever in the upcoming election, driven in no small part by a ruling party mired in scandals involving corruption, hypocrisy at both the national and international levels, brutal engagement of lawfare towards constructive critics, and a sore lack of credible checks, transparency, and accountability. Even an information sphere strangulated by draconian laws, including the notorious POFMA, passed in the name of national security, has failed in masking these “own goals.”
This is because the ruling elites exhibit a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot. Their denial of voting rights to those 21 years and under has propelled the young adults to claim a louder voice in public debates. Unlike those born in the early ’80s and prior, who are more susceptible to the heavily processed information diet dished out by the state media (having grown up with it as their only news outlet), this younger generation is better equipped at seeking diverse information sources.
Then there are those who, despite being forced into political exile, have refused to capitulate to PAP’s apparent modus operandi of threats and lawsuits. Among them is none other than the prime minister’s own brother, Lee Hsien Yang, whose efforts to fulfill the house-demolition wish of their late father, Lee Kuan Yew (LKY), have been met with heavy reprisals from his ruling sibling, who sees the house as a property whose value would grow astronomically, not unlike prices of public housing, which have risen to such ridiculous heights that LKY’s original goal of providing affordable home ownership to the population has long been buried along with him. For all his foresight, LKY seems to have fallen prey to nepotism-induced dysfunction, ironically leaving the country he painstakingly built to the gradual destruction of a detested offspring he woefully placed in the top position of power.
While seemingly incapable of growing the country’s prosperity in the same ethos as his late father, Lee Hsien Loong (LHL)’s administrative period saw the country awash in money-laundering schemes amounting to billions. Coincidental or otherwise, the visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was followed by a stream of power washing that eventually exposed the schemes. But that’s not all; LHL’s administration allegedly took to sweetening world-famous American artist Taylor Swift into not performing for other countries in the region—a short-sighted beggar-thy-neighbor policy whose cover was blown apart, drawing much regional ire despite LHL reportedly congratulating himself on “a good business decision.”
LHL’s administrative pattern of apparent self-flattery, described by the local lingo of “ownself-praise-ownself,” did not end there. In the months leading up to the upcoming election, Singapore was consecutively ranked the top government globally by a grading organization headquartered in Singapore. Founded by a former Singapore civil servant, nearly half of its leadership cabinet was found to be staffed (and stuffed!) with former Singapore government officers before the suspected stunt was brought to light amid controversies over the ranking’s impartiality.
Truly, LKY left his son a functional system and a wealthy coffer that counts Singapore among the world’s richest countries. Had LHL run the country in the same manner of integrity and hard work as his father did, he might not have had to resort to all these contended rapscallion antics, which, in recent days, have descended into his million-dollar-salaried ministers distributing toothbrushes, tissue paper, and ice cream while having pictures taken of them eating $10 meals at hawker centers to suggest that they are not disconnected from the ground. After all, this kind of theatrics may take some for a ride but are unlikely to fool the more astute demographics who pay more attention to harmful policies than dog-and-pony shows.
On foreign policy, Singapore has not done particularly well either. The country’s hypocrisy was put on full display when the ruling elites hopped very quickly to get on the stallion of sanctions against Russia for a pious gallop but were rather muted when countries like Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. fell to illegal invasions. On one hand, Singapore was also throwing expendable cash at Gaza, but on the other hand, it was questioned over promoting Israeli weapons—the kind used to commit atrocities in Gaza—at the Singapore Air Show. The state media, kept afloat by hundreds of millions of taxpayer money after perceived journalistic quality continued to tank with the departure of principled and top-notch veterans, has been relentless outwardly in throwing low punches at Russia—and anyone with the audacity to speak against the official narratives.
On military spending, the ruling elites have often argued for the need to spend top dollars on weapons, especially those pandered by the Big Brother, in the name of national security. However, while Singapore now boasts about being one of the world’s top spenders on weapons, its defense minister apparently denigrated China’s visiting delegation on Singapore soil, and its prime minister (then minister) found it fit to lecture the kettle of China on democracy, calling it black at the economic giant’s home. Singaporeans may be very used to the hubris of their elites, but perhaps the country would be better served if restraint were exercised to withhold their pomposity. After all, what’s the point of splurging billions of tax dollars on military weapons and simultaneously humiliating and provoking big powers on the other? That just flies in the face of the country’s purported Double D (diplomatic and defense) policy.
It would also serve the country well if the ruling elites would stop glorifying the country’s colonial master but render history its rightful place in school classrooms by serving up truthful accounts of the past. This way, at least the nation’s future generation would not fall into the unwarranted pattern of calling Russia a revanchist power because they would actually come to know how Nazism came to be defeated in WWII. On the contrary, the ruling elites might wish to stop giving Zelensky, the illegitimate leader of Ukraine, and his cronies a platform in Singapore to do their sales pitches—at least until tranches of missing weapons and giga bucks are accounted for. Whereas once upon a time, perceived neutrality was one of Singapore’s strengths, LHL appears to have squandered it away in his reign.
Long perceived as taking PAP down a different path than the one his father had intended, LHL’s maneuver of the country is best summed up in the words of Tan Cheng Bock, a former long-serving PAP member who now heads up the PSP Party: PAP has lost its way.
Therefore, while PAP may appear to suffer from no lack of melodramatic antics this election, even the best bleach on the store shelf could not return the image of purity their starched white party uniform seeks to propagate. However, to effect real changes, Singaporeans must know that it is not enough to deny PAP the supermajority in parliament; they would have to hand the opposition a strong mandate. Then again, if they want LHL for five more years and risk an even tighter noose around their neck from the spiraling cost of living and harsher regulations on speaking truth to power, just vote PAP.
