Opinion | Singapore election: the PAP’s order and stability will win out, but how will the opposition shape up?
- The Lion City’s opposition parties are not a government in waiting, but rather a way to provide a level of check and balance on the ruling party
- Though the polls remain a guessing game, most of the speculation is about what level of accountability Singaporeans want during an election
I will start by highlighting three relatively stable factors that are unlikely to change in the coming election.
First, the opposition is not a government in waiting. Furthermore, that’s not what most voters expect from them. They function as a potential check on the ruling party, a means for citizens to exert pressure on the People’s Action Party (PAP) government.
Instead, we have a dominant party system with the PAP entrenched as the party of government, while opposition parties reflect Singaporeans’ desire to impose a certain level of accountability on that government. That’s not going to change in 2020.
The dominant party context helps explain why most voters don’t expect the opposition to have fully formed platforms with detailed policy proposals. The PAP understandably finds this very frustrating. It has criticised such voting behaviour as irresponsible, and wanting “opposition for opposition’s sake”.
