Will the PAP lose political power?

By SEAN LIM

The longevity of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) in Singapore has been brought into question in recent years as the party inches towards its seventh decade in government. In history, no non-communist political party has ever stayed in power for more than 70 years, and after the united front Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition in Malaysia lost power in 2018, the PAP is now the world’s longest-serving ruling party still in power. In the 2019 book by Dr Bilveer Singh - Is the People’s Action Party here to stay? Analysing the resilience of the one-party dominant state in Singapore - he puts forth numerous possibilities the PAP can lose power – or in other words, no longer hold a political hegemony in Parliament in terms of the number of parliamentary seats. I will adopt a citizen’s perspective and introduce the different reasons the PAP may lose power, but ultimately argue that internal party factionalism and losing legitimacy as a ruling party which delivers material needs as the most important pitfalls. 

Corruption and cronyism

The PAP prides itself as “clean, incorruptible, above board and transparent, and lead with integrity” so scandals on corruption and cronyism are bound to bring the party down because it goes against their core values – and deservedly so, as mentioned by founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (Yap, Lim & Leong, 2009). Such a possibility is also mentioned by Singh (2019), drawing parallels from the 2018 General Election (GE) in Malaysia and its impetus on Singapore, where corruption was one of many reasons the incumbent BN was ousted. 

The PAP government has created a political landscape where corruption is not tolerated, with measures that apply to all. These include the Prevention of Corruption Act which prosecutes anybody guilty of bribery, and institutions like the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau to investigate corruption. Internally, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong also reminded its PAP members of parliament (MP) to remain clean, by separating their political position from their private business interests and to refrain from accepting gifts, among others.

But it is worth asking if scandals that undermine the integrity of the PAP government is strong enough to bring it down from power. Although the PAP has emphasised integrity as its core value, the party remains imperfect. There were cases over the years, be it concrete cases or accusations, on corruption and cronyism. 

1. In 1975, Minister of State for Environment Wee Toon Boon was charged for corruption, where he used his position to make representation to civil servants on behalf of a developer, to get benefits such as a bungalow and free air tickets. Mr Wee was sentenced to jail (Chong, 1975). 

2. In 1986, Minister for National Development Teh Cheang Wan was investigated for accepting bribes from two private companies for helping them retain and buy over a piece of state land for development. He eventually committed suicide over it (Loke, 2019). 

3. In 1996, Senior Minister (SM) Lee Kuan Yew and Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) Lee Hsien Loong were investigated for purchasing discounted condominium units. Their integrity was questioned because receiving discounts from the developer was deemed improper, but then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, who ordered the investigations, eventually cleared them of any wrongdoing. Both SM Lee and DPM Lee donated the amount of discounts they received to charity (Fernandez, 1996).

4. Accusations on conflict of interests with appointing Ms Goh Poh Soon as auditor-general because she is the spouse of Senior Minister of State for Defence Heng Chee How, although the PAP government insisted otherwise.

It has become mainstream to say the PAP will be ousted if they are corrupt. Besides Singh (2019) and Yap, Lim and Leong (2009), Mauzy and Milne (2002) also said “poor decision-making and bad choices, not to mention corruption, may well have serious consequences for a country” (p. 192). 

But there is a caveat involved: in order for corruption to be significant in the loss of PAP’s political power, it must first have a direct negative impact on Singaporeans. Using the case of Malaysia, corruption has always existed but never made much a difference in election outcomes until the 1MDB scandal involving Prime Minister Najib Razak was revealed and soon after, the goods-and-services tax was imposed. Malaysians saw the association, that the corruption scandal caused them to suffer by paying new taxes.

On the same note, analysing the local examples cited above, it is clear corruption and cronyism scandals do exist here. Despite so, they did not create much headways in electoral outcomes nor any dents at PAP’s political control as the rule of law and institutions remain strong in Singapore to hold those guilty accountable. 

But more importantly, while those cases were unpleasant, they did not directly affect the welfare of Singaporeans, especially financially where it usually hurts the most, hence they are less unforgiving towards the PAP. The news of such scandals may be shocking, but not to the extent where Singaporeans completely lose confidence in the PAP and vote them out of power. Hence, I argue that unless such scandals have a direct and personal negative impact on Singaporeans, it will not pose a significant danger to the PAP in losing political power.

Loss of political legitimacy

The political legitimacy of the PAP often lies on how the leadership deals with bread-and-butter issues of the day (Singh, 2019). One could say the social contract between Singaporeans and the PAP is transactional, where Singaporeans will continue to give them the mandate as long economic prosperity is delivered (Lam, 2016). In fact, Lam (2016) said Singaporeans use elections as a referendum on the PAP’s policies instead of treating it as a democratic process to select leaders for the next term. Besides citizens, the PAP government also framed their legitimacy from economic goals, with “pragmatism (as their) ideological rhetoric” (Tan, 2012, p. 89). 

An analysis of outcomes in the watershed elections of 1981, 1984, 1991 and 2011 will reveal that the PAP’s share of votes and parliamentary seats dipped, with the Opposition having a significant electoral breakthrough into the PAP’s political hegemony, because of their inability to tackle hot button issues of the day. 

1. In the 1981 Anson by-election, Workers’ Party (WP) candidate J. B. Jeyaretnam won the seat of Anson, becoming the first Opposition politician who broke the PAP’s complete dominance in Parliament since independence. Contributing to the PAP’s loss were impending bus fare hikes and a poorly-handled relocation of workers living in that ward (Peh, 2018). 

2. The PAP lost the seat of Potong Pasir in the 1984 GE to Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) candidate Chiam See Tong, in addition to Jeyaretnam keeping his Anson seat. Reasons for the decline in PAP’s parliamentary hegemony include proposals to extend the withdrawal age for the Central Provident Fund and the Graduate Mother’s Scheme, where the government incentivised well-educated women to give birth, marginalising the non-graduates. The latter was eventually withdrawn after the electoral backlash (Hiok, 1985). 

3. The WP and SDP won four seats in total in the 1991 GE, and the PAP’s vote share slipped to 61 per cent (Singh, 2019). At that point, it was the PAP’s worst electoral performance since independence. Among various reasons, Mutalib (1992) attributed the drop to increase in costs of housing and transport, as well as “local specific issues” (p. 303) where residents are unsatisfied with the way town councils and MPs dealt with localised bread-and-butter issues.

4. The 2011 GE was an election where WP won a record of six seats and had a breakthrough in a group representation constituency – an electoral division with a group of MPs – for the first time, ousting a sitting cabinet minister. According to Chong (2012), Singaporeans were unhappy with the high cost of living and immigration.

As illustrated, the PAP often had its political power eroded when unable to properly deal with the practical issues because the government’s failure directly impacted the welfare of Singaporeans. The ideology of pragmatism (Tan, 2012) has been ingrained in the national psyche, resulting in the transactional government-society relationship and the legitimacy falling on delivery of economic prosperity, failing which Singaporeans will not hesitate to punish the PAP through the ballot box. Judging from electoral trends, since the social contract between the PAP and the people is built on economic prosperity, their political legitimacy will be jeopardised, with the real danger of losing power, if their failure to deliver becomes so consequential that it causes a large voting shift away from the party.

Internal and elite factionalism

Precedence has shown that internal tussle, disunity and factionalism can cause a political party to be at risk of losing power eventually, a point similarly brought up by Singh (2019) who said the PAP “will remain in power for as long as it keeps its unity” (p. 106). Historically, this happened to the PAP in 1961 when it split into two factions – the moderates led by Lee Kuan Yew, which stayed on and developed the post-1961 PAP as it is now, and the radicals led by Lim Chin Siong, which broke away and formed the pro-communist Barisan Socialis (BS). 

According to Singh (2019), the split occurred due to fundamental differences over the merger proposal with Malaya. Despite arrests of key BS leaders under Operation Coldstore in February 1963, which Ramakrishna (2015) said it was politically-motivated and not for legitimate security reasons as the official narrative dictated, the PAP still had its political power eroded tremendously. The PAP received less than half of the popular vote in GE 1963, at 46.9 per cent, compared to 54.1 per cent in the previous 1959 GE. There was also a swing of 14 parliamentary seats to the Opposition, with 13 going to the BS.

In recent history, the SDP also experienced a split in 1993 due to a leadership tussle, according to Loke (2019). As a result, party leader Chiam See Tong resigned and formed the Singapore’s People Party, with the Chiam faction following him while Chee Soon Juan became the new leader of the SDP. Subsequently, after the split, the SDP has not won any parliamentary seats. 

When the party is split into more than one centre of power via the creation of new political parties and subsequent defections into factions led by different personalities, the voting base of the original party gets eroded as voters will be divided into supporting different parties, according to the faction that they are loyal to. Similarly, if the PAP faces such a scenario, the party will face a danger of losing political power to its breakaway factional parties. 

Currently, it is not clear if the PAP is facing significant factionalism, since it often emphasises team leadership. However, there are minor cracks recently in terms of factionalism. Former PAP backbencher Tan Cheng Bock is an example of a political defector, who left the party and formed the Progress Singapore Party in 2019, as well as former MP Inderjit Singh and former cabinet minister George Yeo who spoke critically against the PAP.

Besides dissent and factionalism within the party, we should also not ignore disgruntled elites in the establishment who displayed similar traits, such as Tan Jee Say and Hazel Poa, who despite their former strong links with the PAP government, decided to join the Opposition. Ambassador-at-large Tommy Koh is another figure who remains part of the establishment but has departed from it ideologically, judging from his differing comments on issues such as minimum wage and constructive criticism.

If such potential factionalism and disenchantment from within the party or the establishment remain unchecked, the breakaway factions may pose a credible political threat to the PAP’s power if they decide to enter the political arena under the Opposition banner, since they have a positive reputation as those who used to be part of the government’s machinery.  Hence, when it comes to the polls, there will be numerous credible parties for Singaporeans to consider, and it is quite possible for votes to be divided, resulting in the PAP’s loss of political power if it no longer holds a majority of seats in Parliament.  

Conclusion

I argued through the lens of a citizen the reasons PAP can be at danger of losing political power. The loss of political hegemony when the PAP can no longer deliver economic prosperity to Singaporeans and factionalism are the more significant factors which could possibly erode the PAP’s power because the latter would split votes, while the failure to deliver material goods has a direct negative impact to the welfare of Singaporeans, which in turns breaks the transactional social contract between society and the PAP. It is also possible for corruption and cronyism in the PAP to cause the loss of political power, but may not be compelling enough for Singaporeans to vote the party out, especially if it did not affect their welfare negatively. Ultimately, for the PAP to maintain its political power, the trust and social compact between Singaporeans and the government must maintain strong, as well as party unity – where the lack of it is a common reason for the downfall of political parties worldwide. 

References

Chong, E. (1975, April 20). Toon Boon charged with corruption. The Sunday Times, p. 1.

Chong, T. (2012). A Return To Normal Politics: Singapore General Elections 2011. Southeast Asian Affairs 2012, 283–298. doi: 10.1355/9789814380256-020

Fernandez, W. (1996, May 22). Full details of condo deals revealed. The Straits Times, p.1.

Hiok, L. B. (1985). Singapore in 1984: A Time for Reflection and a Time for Change. Southeast Asian Affairs 1985, 1985(1), 297–305. doi: 10.1355/seaa85q

Lam, P. E. (2016). Parties, New Normal Or Anomaly? 2015 General Election and PAP’s Electoral Landslide. In Change in Voting (pp. 246–264). Singapore: Ethos Books.

Loke, H. Y. (2019). The first wave: JBJ, Chiam & the Opposition in Singapore. Singapore: Epigram Books.

Mauzy, D. K., & Milne, R. S. (2002). Singapore Politics Under the People’s Action Party. London: Taylor and Francis.

Mutalib, H. (1992). Singapore’s 1991 General Election. Southeast Asian Affairs 1992, 299–310. doi: 10.1355/9789812306821-019

Peh, S. H. (2018). Tall Order: The Goh Chok Tong Story. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Ramakrishna, K. (2015). Original Sin? Revising the Revisionist Critique of the 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Singh, B. (2019). Is the People’s Action Party here to stay? Analysing the resilience of the one-party dominant state in Singapore. Singapore: World Scientific.

Tan, K. P. (2012). The Ideology of Pragmatism: Neo-liberal Globalisation and Political Authoritarianism in Singapore. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 42(1), 67–92. doi: 10.1080/00472336.2012.634644

Yap, S., Lim, R., & Leong, W. K. (2009). Men In White: The untold story of Singapore’s ruling political party. Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings.

Pix credits: The Telegraph

Commentary adapted from GES1034 assignment