General Elections in the past

There is a little bit of a symmetry here. I am back where I was just before my trip to Mexico. Then, as now, I was thinking about working in data science. (In between those years, I had mainly earned a degree but worked in software engineering instead.) Then, as now, there was an elections going on.

The only difference, basically, is that I'm older and I have more savings in the bank, although not by that much. I still remember hearing that a girl I dated once or twice got married around that day. It was no big deal, but I remember thinking to myself, one door had been opened, and another had been shut. I was leaving Singapore, Singapore was going to start a new era, and this was a new beginning.

2011 elections was the watershed elections. I think there were only very few watershed elections in the history of Singapore. I think 1968 was a watershed election, because it started the almost total dominance of the PAP in Singapore politics. Then the 1981 Anson elections was another watershed, because they lost a seat to JBJ. That started an era of the PAP using dubious tactics to preserve its stranglehold on power.

There were significant elections in between: the 1988 elections was the one which introduced one of the biggest subterfuges of all time, the Group Representation Constituency. The idea was that the GRC would bundle a few adjacent constituencies together to be voted, in as a bloc, and at least one of them would be reserved for a minority. The running of the town council essentially means that you act as a mayor: the town council would be responsible for all the building management for the HDB flats within that constituency. The 1991 elections was a watershed because the PAP lost a total of 4 seats, and also the first post-LKY elections, which was quite a setback for Goh Chok Tong.

It was during these years that Singapore acquired a reputation for being a flawed democracy. There were plenty of maneuvers, all legal, of course, to make sure that any opposition member who got through the firewalls around the PAP domination of parliament would have a hard time. Countless names, like JBJ, Francis Seow, Tang Liang Hong, Chee Soon Juan and James Gomez all found themselves on the wrong side of what LKY called “the knuckleduster”. The PAP was basically a political machine designed to keep opponents out at almost all costs – the one thing they weren't willing to do was to abolish the practice of popular vote bringing people into parliament. They weren't willing to do the dirty work of stuffing ballot boxes, or selectively disenfranchising people. They weren't willing to bend their own rules, but they were willing to make those rules as unfair to the opposition as they possibly could.

The real watershed elections was 2011. I wasn't even fully aware in advance that this elections was going to be different. The 2001 elections was held in the aftermath of 9/11. It was a masterstroke to be holding the elections right after something that scared the crap out of everybody, and the PAP won very big. But it was also the first elections in the internet era, the first one where they surrendered to the public the monopoly of mass communications.

2011 was probably the only elections in my life that it was worth getting genuinely excited about. Perhaps things had been bubbling under for a while. Low Thia Khiang had been elected in 1991, and it seemed for a while that, together with Chiam See Tong, he would just be a nice and quiet backbencher. He was unassuming enough that nobody expected much of him in the beginning, and I hadn't even noticed him in 1991 until he unexpectedly won a seat. That was quite consequential. Until that point in time, JBJ had been the center focal point of the Worker's Party, but he got sued into bankruptcy in the subsequent years. Low managed to lie low. He didn't even get up the ranks of the party until 10 years later in 2001, but what he managed to accomplish subsequently was quite incredible. He built a whole grassroots operation around the WP, and turned the focus of WP into a party which was geared towards grassroots, campaigning and attempting to dilute the dominance of the PAP.

2011 was the year when that approach started to pay off. It was also the first social media elections, when the internet was more than just a lot of blogs which were bitching about the PAP and supporting the opposition for no other reason than to preserve the principles of democracy. There were several developments which made 2011 a memorable elections.

1. There was a new generation of younger or more capable people who were willing to join the opposition. Sylvia Lim was a smart cookie, and a former lawyer and constable. Chen Show Mao was a lawyer with a high powered CV. Unfortunately LKY was proven right when he sneered at Chen Show Mao for being a lightweight, but at that time his stack of prestigious degrees seemed formidable. There were people like Vincent Wijeysingha, who was the son of my school principal. He fit the mould of your westernised liberal, and he was gay to boot. There was Tan Jee Say, who was a former Principal Private Secretary to Goh Chok Tong. But equally significantly, there was Nicole Seah, a rising political star, not only with good looks and charisma, but also a serious mindedness. Seemingly the most talented adversary since Lim Chin Siong.
2. Peoples' hearts were with the opposition. The opposition had suffered so long under the thumb of the PAP that they readily elicited sympathy. People were astounded that a new generation of people came along who were also of the clean cut goody two shoes image politician that the PAP would have produced, and a few of them were even high achievers. They also acknowledged the sacrifices of the older generation of opposition members, who kept the fire of democracy burning. Chiam See Tong, who has suffered a stroke a few years earlier was probably in no shape or form to run, but still did. He got his wife to take over for him in his iconic Potong Pasir seat, which for whatever reason straddled a small part of Toa Payoh. And he very nearly won the seat. But that means that he got kicked out of his home turf, and thereafter had to ride off into the sunset. Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong were to retire from the cabinet.
3. Some of the crowds were the most amazing things that I ever saw. Perhaps people were charged, and fired up. They tended to be more fired up than ever before. There was a truly emotional farewell to Chiam See Tong at one of the Potong Pasir coffee shops in his ward. It was packed with people sending him off. It was one of the most stirring sights I ever saw in Singapore. As were the videos posted of people yelling Worker's Party slogans and marching out of the stadium in the thousands. It was one of the most electrifying atmospheres I had ever seen.
4. Since this was the first social media campaign, it was pretty amazing to see that some of the opposition members had gotten their act together to produce very slick campaign videos. It was very heartening of Singaporeans to know that on top of having one party who knew how to run the country, you had a few more who were perfectly capable of matching the PAP in their campaigning game.
5. It wasn't just the opposition who had changed. The PAP had also changed, and it was barely able to avert what in relative terms would have been an absolute disaster. They ended up apologising for the mistakes they had made. Previously they had run on an impeccable record of never ever getting it wrong, and of silencing doubters as people whose loyalty was suspect. Now, the people had managed to get it to apologise! It's possible that without that apology, the PAP would have lost even more ground, and quite possibly, the supermajority. And what's even more significant, is that the old culture of intimidating your opponents into silence had forever changed. Instead, it had to run on a platform of “we're still the only party who knows how to do this. The opposition has nothing else to offer but nice words,”
6. After the results came out, there were shocks. Chiam's party had narrowly lost Potong Pasir. The Worker's Party had won a GRC in Aljunied. George Yeo was a well respected and liked minister, but his career was over.

People talked about the “new normal”, where people had a little more freedom to do whatever they wanted. The PAP was still obsessed with control, but now they were doing it with a lighter touch. Over the next decade, Singapore had reason to be proud. They could be proud on the 50th Jubilee, and conveniently LKY passed away that year, and gave the PAP a big boost in the elections. Anthony Chen was making a few good films. Sonny Liew was making his comic book masterpiece. Joseph Schooling was preparing for his Olympic medal gold. Those were good years. We thought that this was the new place that Singapore was turning into, some kind of a weird tech marvel. I wasn't here for the 2015 elections, and it did seem to me to be some kind of a rehabilitation for the government. After a near disaster for them, when Tan Cheng Bock came within a narrow margin of winning the presidency, and two by-elections lost to the Worker's Party, the PAP came roaring back.

In the meantime, it seemed as though the government had learnt something about mastering the social media game. It seemed as though a lot of liberalisation resulted in the unleashing of plenty of pent-up creative energy. It seemed, for a few years, Singapore was enjoying some kind of a renaissance.

And then came the shame of the TanChengBlock and the Oxley Road Saga, and the troubles of the Xi Jinping presidency, when China would start to provoke fights with the USA. And finally, the pandemic.

In a way, this elections was not earth shattering. I used to think that it was highly unusual for the PAP to receive a vote share in the low 60s, compared to the early days of independence when they were consistently wiping the floor with the opposition. Actually, I found out that in the elections between 1984 and 1997, their vote share was in the low 60s, and this was the beginning of the PAP trying to fix the opposition. I remember what it was like growing up in the 1980s in Singapore. It wasn't an entirely happy country, because it was a cloistered place and very boring.

In a way, 1984 was another “watershed” election. Seen in this way, the elections from 2001 to 2015 had the PAP polling more than 65%, with one exception, which was 2011. But maybe in another way, these years were the winter years for the opposition. They were lying low and tired of getting “fixed”. Life in Singapore was getting harder and maybe it was better to just go with the flow.

But there's a reason why this post-2011 “new normal” is different from the 1980s. Back then, you didn't have all the seats contested. It is not possible to compare the 61% polled in 1991 to the 61% polled in 2020, because in 1991, that was the by-election effect. They returned the PAP to power on nomination day, and everybody voted, knowing that there would not be a freak result that would have the PAP thrown out of power. The opposition knew to avoid the seats where the PAP was strong. They knew to avoid the GRCs. The 61% polled by the PAP in 2020 is worse because it's the result of all the seats being contested.