Singapore

Incumbent parties in Australia and Singapore scored unexpected landslide victories on Saturday. A major factor appeared to be voters' trust that they were best equipped to handle President Donald Trump and his trade policies. 

Singapore's ruling party faces domestic and economic headwinds ahead of upcoming elections.

Despite the People’s Action Party’s historical dominance in Singaporean elections, recent trends and internal challenges suggest the opposition may achieve unprecedented gains in the upcoming national election.

After two decades in office, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will pass the baton to the ruling party’s chosen successor, who faces a complex geopolitical environment and growing challenges to the party’s leadership at home.

Southeast Asian responses to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza have aligned with each country’s broader foreign policy stances.

Most Southeast Asian governments have issued muted statements regarding Israel's war with Hamas, except for Indonesia and Malaysia, the two largest Muslim-majority countries in the region.

The PAP has made unbending integrity central to its identity, magnifying the damage the recent scandals have done to the party.

A series of scandals have upset Singapore's typically stable politics.

The latest in our series on Southeast Asian relations with Russia looks at two important U.S. partners.

Late last year, Cambodia finally began oil production, from offshore fields in the Gulf of Thailand. A joint venture between the Cambodian government and Singaporean company KrisEnergy Ltd started production, and will be ramping up new wells in the coming months. Cambodia has known about its offshore oil for more than a decade, and other oil firms like Chevron had invested in Cambodian offshore exploration in the past. But production had been delayed for years as some companies were scared off by the low global price of oil and as the Cambodian government initially could not reach a deal on production with an oil company. The offshore fields will start with a peak production of around 7,500 barrels of oil per day, a relatively small amount: major oil states like Russia produce well over 10 million barrels each day, and neighboring states like Thailand produce more than Cambodia as well. But even that modest output will reportedly create some $500 million in new revenue for Cambodia, where GDP per capita is only around $1,500. Cambodian government believes there are hundreds of millions of barrels of oil in its offshore waters; revenues could increase as new wells are developed after the project’s first phase. Announcing the production online, Prime Minister Hun Sen called the oil output “a blessing.” And yet, in one of the most authoritarian and corrupt countries in East Asia, a place where Hun Sen has throttled the remnants of Cambodia’s pseduodemocracy in recent years, who will actually benefit from the new oil production? For more on Cambodia’s new oil production, and its impact on the country, see my new World Politics Review article.

Meredith Weiss is professor and chair of political science in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy of the University at Albany, SUNY. As anticipated, the incumbent People’s Action Party (PAP) won Singapore’s July 10 general election, held amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Even Singapore’s leading opposition party, the Workers’ Party (WP), which boosted its share of seats in parliament from seven to ten, had denied seeking to deny the PAP a “mandate”—it vowed merely not to allow the long-ruling party a “blank check.” And so the WP, one of multiple opposition parties that contested the election, but the only one to win seats, did. (The Progress Singapore Party will send another two opposition politicians to parliament, but without having won any constituencies, a uniquely Singaporean consolation prize for the “best losers” nationally.) Following the July 10 election, the PAP still holds 89.2 percent of parliamentary seats (eighty-three of ninety-three), a fairly marginal decrease from the 93.3 percent share of seats (eighty-three of eighty-nine) it secured in 2015. Yet at 61.2 percent, the PAP’s share of the popular vote fell below the 65 percent for which it had hoped—a level that would be on par with its usual results, though less impressive than the 69.9 percent it garnered in 2015, in the wake of Lee Kuan Yew’s passing and Singapore’s fiftieth anniversary bonanza. The general election result is really a win for both sides: the opposition parties, and especially the WP, can rest assured that a decent share of voters finds them credible, even in times that call for especially competent leadership, whereas the PAP still knows the electorate loves it best. At the same time, the election has obliged introspection on the part of the PAP, and does suggest ways in which the PAP, or governance broadly in Singapore, will likely recalibrate. First, there is the question of leadership. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced in 2018 that he would retire by age seventy (he is sixty-eight now), but his designated successor, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, failed to thrive in the general election. The group representation constituency (GRC) team Heng led won its district, but barely. Granted, the PAP faced a stiff WP challenge in that GRC, and the party “parachuted” Heng in to lead the team at the last minute—invariably a liability—but his standing as prime-minister-in-waiting seems more tenuous now. Lee has suggested that, in light of the pandemic, he might delay his departure as prime minister, but Heng’s colleagues insist they remain united in favor of his succeeding Lee, whenever the transition happens. Indeed, the PAP chose not Heng or another fellow PAP fourth-generation, or “4G,” leader to represent the party in the one English-language televised debate of the campaign but the more seasoned foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan (who later insisted he’s the same age as Heng, even if not generally considered to be in the same 4G political cohort). Lee’s new cabinet, which he announced July 25, rotates its 4G members but leaves Heng seemingly secure as heir-apparent, retains several seasoned “3G” ministers among a handful of new faces, and maintains “a greater degree of continuity” than usual, as Lee explained, given the pandemic. Meanwhile, the WP successfully navigated its own first election under new leadership: former Secretary-General Low Thia Khiang passed the reins to successor (and now Singapore’s first recognized Leader of the Opposition) Pritam Singh in 2018. Low, as well as party veterans Chen Show Mao and Png Eng Huat, then stood down from contesting this general election in favor of younger party members. That the party still maintained and expanded its foothold—with a team of younger members’ securing a first-ever second GRC—suggests the transition was a success. Moreover, the strong strides made by newcomer opposition party Progress Singapore Party (PSP) suggests a life-after-PAP path for defectors from Singapore’s dominant party. Eighty year old ex-PAP MP Tan Cheng Bock launched PSP only in January 2019, together with other former PAP members and, as elections approached, PM Lee’s estranged brother Lee Hsien Yang. PSP benefited the most from voters defecting from the PAP. The role of younger voters in Singapore is the second key dimension to watch going forward. The electoral impact of young voters is easily overstated, but their interests did help to set the tone in this election. Voters aged twenty-five to thirty-five were the biggest population “bulge” in 2020, and they were inclined, per Ambassador-at-Large Chan Heng Chee, toward “personal narratives and ‘I feel your pain’ connectivity, approachability and authenticity.” She finds the WP well attuned to these “Zoomers.” Even so, first-time voters (aged twenty-one to twenty-four) comprised less than 10 percent of the electorate; only one-third of the electorate was people in their twenties and thirties. While concrete data are unfortunately scarce, a Blackbox Research survey found the highest support for the WP among that twenty-one to twenty-four year old segment—but that share of voters alone could not turn the tide. Rather, economically pinched voters in their forties through early sixties who switched from the PAP to opposition parties, suggests the PAP’s Lawrence Wong, incumbent minister for national development, likely had more impact in reducing the PAP’s share of the popular vote this time around. That said, PAP and opposition postmortems, and what messages seemed to stick during the campaign itself, indicate there will now likely be a change in the PAP’s tone and focus, our third factor. Wong notes the need for the PAP to step up its game with young voters. He suggests that while the party “tried [its] best” to reach younger voters with online content, including on Instagram and Telegram, “not all of this connected with netizens.” Pundits emphasized that younger voters in particular seemed to prefer a less paternalistic tone, more open discussion of sensitive issues of race and religion (a flashpoint especially in light of police investigation of first-time WP candidate Raeesah Khan’s previous social media posts alleging racial and religious discrimination in Singapore), and new voices in parliament. As popular PAP Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam put it post-election, the party’s smaller popular vote share “is leading the party to review its own game so as to win the hearts, and not just the minds, of a changing electorate.” The parties emphasized different themes, too: the PAP aimed to keep the focus on jobs, whereas opposition parties hammered home the call for new voices in Parliament. Blackbox Research found the electorate nearly evenly split on these themes, with 53 percent favoring the PAP’s economic focus over the opposition’s diverse-voices narrative. But the PAP did a sometimes-ham-fisted job of delivering its message. PAP activists, for instance, noted that when the Singapore Democratic Party’s (SDP) Chee Soon Juan claimed the PAP had once supported a highly unpopular population target of ten million—resistance to an onslaught of foreigners, taking good jobs from Singaporeans, was a prominent opposition-campaign theme—the PAP spent more effort working to impugn his credibility and integrity than in addressing the immigration issue. Or as one PAP activist said, the party has “to do more to convince (people of) why PAP is good, and not why the opposition is bad.” Fourth and finally, that change in tone might translate to shifts in the policy process and in policy outcomes. For one thing, there will be more opposition MPs than in the previous parliament: ten from the WP, supplemented by two non-constituency MPs from the PSP who intend to work as part of a WP-led “alternative front.” The PAP has signaled that it expects the WP to contribute ideas to policymaking in parliament; the WP’s Pritam Singh has countered that PAP must be more forthcoming with information if it seeks “realistic policy alternatives.” But it seems conceivable that some of the WP’s policies, which tend slightly to the left of the PAP’s, could make it onto the parliamentary agenda. Ian Chong, a political scientist, explains that the leading opposition parties (WP, PSP, and SDP) all campaigned on a “more systematically [economically] redistributive approach” than the PAP, which “kept to its traditional emphasis on the efforts of individuals and families, with minimalist state support supplemented by one-off transfers.” On the table now could be strengthened social safety nets in particular: for instance, a minimum wage (Singapore currently has no minimum wage), unemployment insurance, and measures to support the value of the Housing Development Board flats in which over 80 percent of Singaporeans live, overwhelmingly as homeowners, but with ninety-nine-year leases. Probably less likely to change are those features of the system that protect incumbents in Singapore. Among them are the much-critiqued Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), the PAP’s monopolization of the parastatal “grassroots” People’s Association, and the mix of GRCs and single-member constituencies (SMC)—though now that the PAP has lost two of the former, each wiping out a full slate of candidates, perhaps a return to full-SMC could be in the cards. These elections are not earth-shattering in their ramifications for Singapore governance or policy directions. Yet they are meaningful nonetheless, in the short term and in signaling possible longer-term trends.  

In last Friday’s election, Singapore’s long-ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), as usual, won a large share of the seats in parliament. With roughly 61 percent of the total vote, the PAP took eighty-three out of ninety-three seats in parliament, 89 percent of the total contested seats, the result of an electoral system that is built to create large majorities for the PAP. Still, the various opposition parties made major strides. They came just short of holding the PAP to its lowest share of the popular vote ever—the PAP took about 60 percent in the 2011 general election—but they came close to that 2011 figure. The opposition also won two group representation constituencies for the first time, and seriously challenged the PAP in others, coming much closer than before in several constituencies. The opposition now has a firmer ground in parliament to scrutinize PAP policies, and propose real alternatives. And the poor showing in the election by the presumptive next prime minister, Heng Swee Keat, who led a slate that barely won its group representation constituency, raises doubts about whether Singaporeans are ready to embrace the leadership of the next generation of PAP politicians, in the same way they embrace Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Chok Tong, and Lee Hsien Loong. As a result, Prime Minister Lee might wind up staying in the job longer than previously assumed, and delaying any handover to the next generation of PAP leaders. And the decision to call a snap election, during the pandemic, clearly angered some Singaporeans. The election in Singapore might well lead Malaysia’s ruling coalition, which has a bare majority in parliament and appears to be deciding whether to call a snap election, to reconsider. Reflecting on the results of the general election, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong admitted that the PAP faced a tough battle. "This was not a feel-good election," Prime Minister Lee told reporters. He also said: "The results show a clear desire for a diversity of voices in parliament." The overall trend in Singaporean politics, then, seems to suggest that, while the PAP remains powerful, it is no longer as dominant as in the past. Opposition parties are putting together deeper benches of politicians—the PAP historically has attracted the city-state’s best political talent and derided the opposition for its lack of quality recruits—and have made excellent use of social media and other tools to appeal to younger Singaporeans. In addition, the PAP’s inability to confront some of the biggest issues in Singapore society made it vulnerable in this election, and could allow the opposition to make further gains going forward. Besides the PAP’s struggle to control COVID-19, which (might) be a shorter-term issue, the persistently high cost of living, the hard-hit Singaporean white-collar workforce, the challenges with Singapore’s existing housing model, and other deeply entrenched socioeconomic problems will continue to challenge the PAP government. In the longer-term, the stage may be set for more contested politics.

By the normally staid, unchanging standards of Singapore politics, Friday’s election appears to be delivering significant changes. Though official results are not yet out as I write this, initial counts suggest that opposition parties are going to make real gains, and the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) is going to have one of its worst showings since it first came to office in 1959. The opposition apparently has won two group representation constituencies—constituencies where a slate of candidates all run for office together—and even in areas where the PAP seems likely to win, its margin has been cut significantly from the previous general election. (The opposition has not won two group representation constituencies in any prior election, so this could be a landmark.) In addition, even in many areas the PAP won, its margin of victory was shaved significantly over previous elections. Overall, initial counts suggest, the opposition apparently has gained at least 5 percent more of the popular vote than in the last election, and perhaps an even greater swing has occurred. Even in the group representation constituency where the PAP’s slate was led by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, the presumed successor as prime minister to Lee Hsieng Loong, the PAP only won with 54 percent of the vote. It is possible that the weak result in the constituency led by Heng Swee Keat might even lead the PAP to rethink whether he should be the presumptive next prime minister. To be sure, the PAP is not in danger of losing its fearsome majority. It seems likely to take eighty-three out of ninety-three seats in parliament, and the structure of Singapore’s electoral system, with group representation constituencies that are also winner-take-all, makes it harder for the opposition to make massive gains in any election. But the PAP’s mandate will be weakened, with more opposition members in parliament and, probably, a far lower PAP share of the overall vote than in the last general election. The government’s inconsistent, stumbling handling of COVID-19—after an effective initial approach, it allowed the virus to spread widely in dorms for foreign workers, and wound up with one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in Southeast Asia—the deep economic downturn, and the growing mobilization of opposition parties online all appear to have helped the PAP’s opposition. The opposition also was able to recruit several dynamic and impressive candidates, which it often had lacked in the past, and they helped the opposition hold its own in debates with the PAP during the short campaign period. And the government’s decision to call a new election, even though it was not legally obligated to do so until next year, might have backfired, making some Singaporeans angry that they had to vote in the midst of the pandemic. In the wake of this election, the PAP will need to regroup. It did so successfully after it took a hit in the 2011 general election, and it is nothing if not durable.