News this week included: Donald Trump’s invitation to Singapore to join his “board of peace”; Mark Carney’s “nostalgia is not a strategy” speech at Davos, which has resonated locally; the passing of Liu Thai Ker, Singapore’s first master planner; jail for preschool leaders who covered up molestation of toddlers by a cook; a survey showing that many young Singaporeans expect million-dollar inheritances from their parents; seniors not retiring but choosing “fractional” jobs; a Chinese paper in Malaysia under investigation after allegedly mistranslating the Agong’s speech, after the government’s move to make the teaching of Malay and history mandatory across all schools; and South-east Asian countries banning Grok, an AI-powered chatbot that allows the creation of nude deepfakes, including of children.
Politics: ‘FO with your LO’
It’s been a week since Lawrence Wong, prime minister, stripped Pritam Singh of his title as Leader of the Opposition, the PAP’s latest salvo in the long-running Raeesahgate. It is too early to predict its longer-term impact on their respective parties’ fortunes, but the early signs aren’t good for the ruling party. Singh and the WP, which he leads, appear to be winning much sympathy from non-partisan Singaporeans, based on anecdotal and survey evidence: a Yahoo! News poll of over 10,000 people showed that some 78 percent of respondents disagreed with the demotion, at the time of publication. (It’s still live.)
Many online are also cheering the WP’s decision not to nominate a new LO, as Wong had suggested. “In other Westminster systems, the title of the Leader of the Opposition is established by law and is not the prerogative or choice of the Government of the day or the Prime Minister. This approach expresses the authority and sanctity of the people’s vote,” the WP said in a statement on Wednesday. “The Workers’ Party takes the view that the leader of the largest opposition party in Parliament, is the leader of the opposition.” Even Calvin Cheng, former nominated MP and strident defender of the crown, admired the WP’s tactical nous, saying he thinks the PAP has run out of moves. “Once [the LO role is] offered, it can’t be at the discretion of the ruling party to dictate who it should be. People just cannot accept this.”
To understand public sentiment, it’s worth recalling that the WP has, over the past two decades, established a clear distance between itself and other opposition parties. In the past two elections it has outperformed the PAP in aggregate in the districts it contested. A post-election poll last year by IPS, a thinktank within NUS, found that the two parties had similar levels of credibility among respondents (and well above the others). An earlier Jom poll ranked Singh as one of Singapore’s most popular politicians. Many Singaporeans, even PAP supporters, appreciate that Singh and the WP, sometimes celebrated/derided as “PAP-lite”, are the ones in Parliament who’ll check a hegemon’s excesses. After decades of pummelling the opposition into submission, the PAP this time may have gone too far. Does it really want to obliterate all?
Singaporeans will be eager to see how all this affects the dynamics of parliamentary debates. As the LO, Singh had preferential treatment from the Speaker, and contributed to some of Parliament’s liveliest discussions in decades. Given that the WP has closed ranks—assuming an ongoing internal investigation doesn’t penalise Singh further—it may be wise for the PAP to relent, and offer Singh similar time on the floor. Though recent events suggest that wisdom may be in short supply, as seemingly more moderate politicians like Wong and Indranee Rajah nurture their skills in the arch-conservative ways of old.
Some further reading: In “The unchanging PAP playbook”, we analyse the reasons why the PAP has long dealt with dissent, in society and Parliament, in the same way.
