Observations From the Presidential Elections 2011
August 31, 2011 2 Comments
After 18 years, Singaporeans finally returned to the polls to elect a new head of state. After 9 gruelling days of relentless campaigning and a marathon Polling Day, former Deputy Prime Minister Dr Tony Tan has emerged victorious, beating Tan Cheng Bock by a slim margin of 0.34%.
While much has been said about the elections, I would like to offer three observations about the Presidential Elections and its impact on the future political landscape of Singapore.
1) The PAP is no longer guaranteed of the middle ground.
With his close links to the PAP Establishment and his track record as a former Cabinet minister, Dr Tony Tan emerged as the perceived “Government-endorsed candidate”. While the PAP refrained from officially endorsing anyone, Dr Tan received strong support from former PAP MPs and a mention from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, unlike the other candidates. Dr Tony Tan can therefore be seen the candidate who is most closely linked to the PAP and we might infer that the majority of his supporters could be also be strong PAP supporters.
On the other end of the spectrum is Mr Tan Jee Say. Mr Tan’s positions stood in stark contrast to Dr Tony Tan’s and promised to “reserve the right to speak out on fundamental issues of conscience”. A Singapore Democratic Party candidate in GE2011, Mr Tan was the only presidential candidate to have been associated with the political opposition in Singapore. Furthermore, Mr Tan also received endorsements from opposition figures like Nicole Seah and Vincent Wijeysingha and we might therefore conclude that he managed to draw strong support from core opposition supporters.
Dr Tan Cheng Bock and Mr Tan Kin Lian’s supporters would probably fall in between the two extremes of the political spectrum. With Dr Tan Cheng Bock’s pledge to bridge the perceived political divide and Mr Tan Kin Lian’s record of never having run for elections before, the two might be considered “moderates”, drawing support from a vast swathe of the population who feel neither inclined to stick with the PAP nor ready to give the opposition a chance.
If the above hold true, it follows that the Singaporean electorate can be broken down into three broad categories consisting of: (i) Conservatives, or a strong pro-PAP core that either values continuity and stability or remain sympathetic to the PAP. They form about 35% of the electorate; (ii) Opposition supporters, or another polar extreme that will support non-Establishment candidates regardless of their calibre or track record. Such people can be inferred to comprise 25% of the electorate, based on Mr Tan Jee Say’s numbers and (iii) Moderates, who prefer a non-confrontational, more stable brand of politics but will be willing to break ranks with the Establishment if presented with non-Establishment candidates who are well-qualified yet not too radically different from the Establishment.
It is this 40% of the electorate that holds the key to electoral victory and will be the group that political parties must woo to ensure success. The Presidential Election has confirmed a trend observed in GE2011, which is that such moderates no longer feel obliged to stick with the PAP for the sake of stability and are willing to take a chance with a lesser-known candidate with impeccable credentials and a less confrontational stance. The Workers’ Party has shown a glimmer of its ability to identify and ride this trend and its victory in Aljunied GRC and significant vote shares in the areas it contested attest to this.
The PAP hence needs to try to win back this middle ground if it wants to avoid further losses in the future. It is conceivable that Dr Tan Cheng Bock managed to ride this “middle ground” to lose narrowly to the initial frontrunner. Many more Singaporeans were willing to take a chance with a candidate that did not fit the usual mould and back a man who was close, but not too close to the ruling party. Mr Chen Show Mao comes to mind as one person who enjoys significant popularity as an opposition candidate eschewing the confrontational approach while being firm on his party’s positions and values.
Opposition parties should thus seek to field more candidates of such calibre, people who could conceivably be PAP candidates but choose not to, because of one reason or the other. The PAP needs to defend this middle ground, but cannot resort to the same old tactics and would need to develop a novel, innovative approach to win over such voters, especially the younger generation who might not have formed party loyalties yet. Dr Tan Cheng Bock’s good showing proves the middle ground is increasingly fickle and will shift quickly and en masse away from the PAP once a good candidate emerges.
(More on next page.)
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Ben L.
W.H.
Hammy
G.T.
With hindsight, this analysis would have been useful after the 2006 GE, but useless guide going forward. My point is the population profile and political preference changes constantly, there is a clear trend and that is away from PAP’s “I know best just trust me” message, simply because PAP’s “best” is not the “best” for the people. Just take the example of the sheer disbelief to the old man’s message “FT is good for you, accept it”. The rate of change is proportionate to the PAP’s insistence on going its same direction – people are smarter than the mass media propaganda – just look at the circulation numbers (as opposed to sales because that depends largely on advertisement rate inflation) of Straits Times. And the more the PAP continue to drag its feet on economic and social reforms, as well as reform itself, the faster the rate of voters’ migration. In less than 3 months, they went from 60% to 35%, that is my interpretation as citizen. For the PAP the opposition went from 40% to TJS’s 25%, so they will feel they won. We’ll see in 5 years’ time whether the PAP as it is still exist or will be forced to split.
Sorry to disagree. Conservative votes are 70%.