Yesterday was the Polling Day for Singapore. All Singaporeans head out to vote for their choice of government for the next five years yesterday. As expected, the ruling party, People’s Action Party (PAP) won and Lee Hsien Loong will continue to be the Prime Minister (it would be his last stint as Prime Minister…he has been holding on to this position for 16 years now). Out of 93 seats contested in the Parliament, PAP won 83 while the remaining 10 were won by the main opposition party, Worker’s Party (WP).
Although I am not a Singaporean, but I do pay a little bit of attention to this election. It was a long day yesterday as the voting period was extended to 10pm. Early results only came in after 12am and the final official results were only revealed when clock almost strikes 4am. I was already asleep that time but was woken up by my landlord (staying in next room) who I believed raised up his phone volume to the highest to listen to the latest election results.
Singapore’s general election is not as exciting as the one in Malaysia. PAP never lost and ends every elections with big wins with very little competition by the opposition parties. While for Malaysia, it is more of a neck-to-neck battle between the opposition and the government that will get us anxious and eagerly watching closely for the election’s outcome.
PAP won with a clear mandate as usual but there is an obvious sign of increasing support to the WP. PAP’s overall popularity vote also dropped from 69.86% to 61.24% which is the lowest since 2011 general election. I also noticed that PAP only won slightly above 50% in many of the constituencies as the opposition had shown a stronger showing by gaining above 40%. The increase of support for the opposition signifies that PAP cannot be too comfortable from now on and that many Singaporeans may have not approve to the way the government handled issues especially the most recent Covid-19 matters. Some also criticized the move to hold the election at this time now during the pandemic which is quite unsafe although the deadline to do so hasn’t come yet.
On the other hand, I also think that there were too many opposition parties here in Singapore. Acting alone will not lead you to anywhere. It would be more effective if all opposition parties joined forces (just like in Malaysia) to give a stronger fight as one.
Okay…enough of me talking about the politics of Singapore. It’s not even my country (I was just residing here for work). It’s just me sharing a bit of my view on the election; a perspective from an outsider.
I took the opportunity to enjoy this 3-day long weekend break which is rare. Unfortunately, the borders have not been opened yet. If not, I would have seize the chance to return to my home at KL for a slightly longer stay or took a short trip to other parts of Malaysia. All that is not possible, thanks to the present Covid-19 pandemic. It’s still on-going after over half a year. That’s frustrating.
(Images in this post are from various online sources)
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