The Future of Parties
Delivered at the Institute of Policy Studies Post-Elections Forum
Good afternoon distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I remember in the run up to this election, a number of people who are here in this room actually, whether in the media or privately in your own homes were saying that they expected a clean sweep from the PAP in the General Elections. And I wish I could name all of you individually. But that would not be in a good taste. And I think if not anything else, this election gives us, who are in the opposition party, some cause for hope for the future because we see certain
rationality, a certain appeal to the higher principles in which Singaporeans vote.
And of course, my presentation here is not as analytical as Derek’s (Derek da Cunha) because I am not an analyst. I am just a player in the system. And speaking from the Workers’ Party (WP) perspective, I think there is some cause for optimism for the future for us. To people outside Singapore, they maybe wondering why is there a cause for optimism because it is after all, the number of elected seats for WP remains at one seat out of 84. If you look at the share of valid votes that the Workers’ Party got, it is actually slightly lower than what we got for the 2001 elections. There were some pleasant surprises for me personally and, I think, for some of my party colleagues as well, arising from this election.
This photograph here, some of you may have already seen it, was used here with permission from yawningbread. It was obtained at 8.45 am this morning. The first two points which I put up there are connected in a sense that we know that the Prime Minister gave Senior Minister this permission of winning back the two opposition wards, and they were talking about getting a clean sweep and as the weeks went on, it became maybe 83 out of 84 after all. In the end, it failed in such a way that the two incumbent oppositions
have actually increased their voting margins. SM Goh put it down to the case of loyalty to the incumbents. But my question is, is it just a case of loyalty?
Perhaps, there was a feeling that there was a lack of fair play in the elections. And we find that connected to this, there is an indication that there is an open rejection of the strategy of selective upgrading of HDB estates in the General Election. Even people who are not living in opposition wards, people who are living in private housing were beginning to question whether it is legitimate for the PAP to use tax-payers’ money to advance its party objectives. We made this an election issue this year and it seems that from my assessment of what people has been saying, it seems to strike a chord with the voters.
One interesting thing which I found was the role of the cyber community which I believe some will be touching on later. Personally, I am not a geek. I don’t talk to people I don’t know on the net. In the course of house visits in the last few years, I had not seen an indication that cyberspace had affected the information the voters had about us. But this election showed me that probably, the penetration rate and the potential of the reach of that form of communication can be very high during the period when people have intense interest in the elections. I was very struck by that fact that during the campaign, for example, say, I would be doing a public outreach somewhere, someone would come up to me and say, “Oh, I have seen your talk on the videocast.” I realized myself that I have underestimated the value of that.
This is interesting because if you remember in April, the Workers’ Party filed a parliamentary question to raise this point with the government. We asked the Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts whether there would be a liberalisation of the podcast and the Internet. And Dr. Balaji said, “No, it would remain illegal and people would be prosecuted”. But it seems that people don’t believe that this would happen (that they would be prosecuted). It is interesting to note that it was reported yesterday by Dr. Lee Boon Yang who was making a comment at some public relation academy that they would look at liberalising this form of communication for the next GE and so, this is a significant victory.
The last point is about voters’ behaviour pre and post. For all of us in the WP, we sometimes ask ourselves of the effort we put in and the limited resources that we have – are we frogs in the well? Do Singaporeans care about what we are trying to do? And so on. And we find that during this election, we had very encouraging
and warm responses from people. During the pre-election period for instance, there were many people who volunteered to help us during the elections. They just did not talk but they put their words into action. For example, we have people we never knew before agreeing to function as our polling agents and counting agents during the whole of Polling Day as well as being our representatives for the process. There were some others who were more physically fit and volunteered to distribute the election materials. They impressed me, in particular with one man who single-handedly delivered our materials to 5000 homes all by himself. These are very touching outpourings of support.
Of course, during the polling results, we could see that there was some support of what the WP is trying to do based on the outcomes of the various electoral wards. In the post-election period as well, I mean we take Derek’s point that we try to reach a critical mass because we know at this stage we are still building phase and we have seen people come forward to join us, and also, it is very interesting that nowadays, when I am out somewhere, strangers would come up to me. The other day, I was having dinner with some friends, and as I walked out to the ladies, this waiter was proudly showing me the WP’s party flag that he bought from the rally and asked me to sign the materials he had purchased. It was a touching outreach from the people.
Perhaps more significantly, we are confident there is public acceptance in the population for party politics. It is interesting to note the responses from Aljunied’s PAP MPs who said that their local programmes did not really attract voters’ interest. Voters were really concerned with national issues. And the point is, in the context of Singapore, when else can the people of Singapore have the government to account for their national policies? An endorsement of this was seen on Tuesday night when the Prime Minister made his speech at the swearing in of the Cabinet. He said, “Alright! This election, we have heard from the people. We will do something about the cost of living. We will look at Healthcare.” We (WP) make no apologies for canvassing the national agenda.
An interesting phenomenon is on engaging the population. Last week there was a forum in the Guild House where some speakers observed that there seems to be an awakening in the people about politics. We seem to find that this is quite true. I don’t know the reason exactly. It could be a combination of reasons. One of the reasons is that more than half of the seats were contested this time. So, more than half of the electorate is forced to make a choice. And once you are forced to do that, there is a domino effect on your
family when you need to exercise your vote. Secondly and possibly, the population became engaged because they saw some dynamism in the opposition movement. As far as the WP is concerned, in the last election we fielded 2 candidates. In this election, we fielded 20 candidates, 15 of whom are first-timers, including myself. I think that has some effect over the younger generation, that the opposition movement is alive, and perhaps there is some potential to grow. Lately, I have been receiving a lot of queries myself from young people asking me why I have taken this step to join the WP. I think it is very healthy that people are talking about these issues.
The last point here is about earning the trust of the people. I think it was mentioned earlier on by Derek that the WP appears to be very moderate and in one sense, careful. I think that we know that we have to earn the trust of people and it does not come overnight. People observe the party over a period of time. And we are very happy to note in the post-GE conference that the Prime Minister called, he was commenting on the results of the Ang Mo Kio GRC, and he said that that, “Well, the Ang Mo Kio voters voted for the WP brand”. Well, thanks for that.
Of course, besides the party organisation and the fact that we have to build up our organisation, I think as individuals the population looks at opposition members very carefully. Perhaps more carefully than the PAP candidates because in one sense, when you are faced with the choice whether to vote for the opposition, you might be voting for change so, who are these people you are voting for? For us, we realise that we need to spend a period of time to let the voters get to know us. So if we ourselves are not public figures
in our own right, then there is no substitute for groundwork and hard work. We are prepared to work because we think that it is something that people need to know.
Some of the points here are covered by Derek already. Perhaps, I want to touch on the second point which is the ‘Fear Factor to Diminish’. Many of us, who have lived in Singapore all of our lives, have gone through periods where we have seen opposition members get into trouble because of the law but a lot of the young people here don’t have that baggage. We still see some signs of it in a sense that young people came to inquire about the WP; parents may try to dissuade them from getting involved because of the memories of the past. But nowadays, young people make up their own minds. Having seen the fact that WP has grown…we are still not in jail – jail is not necessarily an end-point to opposition involvement. I think, over time, this fear factor will diminish. At the next election, I think WP will field more candidates. How many more?
It is hard to say at this point. Rest assured Derek, we will work towards the critical mass.
Thank you.
