05.07.06
Collective Behaviors
With the elections just over, it is interesting to do the analysis of the Singapore politics over the years. The biggest change was in the 1984 election when the popularity votes started to depart from the 70s percentage to the 60s percentage. For the last 22 years, the percentage held stable (with oppositions sometimes winning more, sometimes less) with the exception of 2001, where the election was held after September 11 (The percentage was in the 70s). Interestingly, as a 1970s kid, I saw the remnants of the third world Singapore as a young boy. From 1980s onwards, Singapore has been pretty developed.
In 22 years, the people who were 20s had turned 40s and the 40s had turned 60s. Yet interestingly, in almost a generation, the percentage stood firm. Recall that we were brought up with old jokes like “PAP - Pay and Pay, WP - Why Pay, SDP - So Don’t Pay”, and despite the cynicism drummed into most kids I played with, as a whole, the behavior had not changed. Also, interestingly, though I cannot quote the exact figures, the university degree holders must have increased significantly over the 22 years and should have tilted towards more opposition (It is widely known that the educated are the ones who tend to lend support to an opposition movement). But, this shift has not happen.
Also an interesting statistic was the contest of Cheng San GRC in the 1997 election. The WP featuring JB and TLH actually did about the same as the WP featuring Sylvia and Gomez (actually they did better but they did contest with lighter-weight PAP candidates.) The fiery style of politics actually did work for about 16 years where JB first won a seat in Anson to the time of his last participation in Cheng San GRC. Of course, CSJ, on the other hand was not entirely sucessful in this type of execution. The intellectual style seemed to be preferred in recent years especially with the strong showing of WP this round.
However, the key question was why that in over 22 years, where supposedly there were a lot of changes in Singapore, everything remained the same politically. Here are some history snippets I remember and bother to search the internet to confirm the exact dates. The first MRT came in 1987 from Toa Payoh to Yishun. Singtel was privatized in 1992 and the telecoms industry was deregulated in the year 2000. The Keppel-Tat Lee merger happened in 1998. COE was introduced in 1990. GST was introduced in 1994.
On one hand, it is also important to look at how the ruling party defended on the 60s percentage of popularity votes. The three successful strategies are (1) consolidation of constituencies into larger entities, (2) money disimbursement to the population (first, through Singtel shares) and (3) upgrading (upgrading came in the GCT era).
With the opposition wards rejecting a combined $180m, upgrading as a strategy seem to have reached the end of life. I think in 10 years, people have come to realize that upgrading is very unsettling. I stay in a block currently undergoing upgrading, many residents are actually quite unhappy about it (from the conversations you have/heard in the lift). There is little gain in net result. Financially, the property did not go up too much (very much like renovations to a HDB flat, which adds little value). Despite the new facade, an old flat is an old flat and I would still get cockroaches in my apartment.
On larger entities, it is still not clear whether the opposition has finally figured out how to tackle a GRC and it is still quite possible to redraw electoral boundaries. One clear tactic for the opposition would be to move towards single constituency voting again.
Money disimbursement is a good strategy and will continue to happen, and if PAP could do it on a continuous basis without bankrupting the country, it enforces the right positive feedback loop in which the elected party improves the country and bring the money back to the voters.
Sometimes, I wonder what change will trigger another political change in the next 20 or so years. In the first 15 to 16 years of the last 22 years, I believe there is a net increase in the level of income (despite the 1997 financial crisis) but in the last 5-6 years, there is little increase partly due to CPF reductions and structural changes in the economy. It is hard to imagine the kind of salary growth we have experienced in the 80s and 90s, persisting the next 15 or so years. Perhaps, the population is willing to accept the fact of little or no growth or perhaps, they have not see the light of this no-growth situation. Or maybe, there is still substantial growth to be seen, which I highly doubt (also shared by the PM incidentally).
I end this post with a note that Singapore as a population in 1984 is still pretty much the same as the current population in 2006 based on the election results. The stability could be attributed to the ruling party strategies (co-evolving with the population). As a result, the academic but probably useless conclusion is that Singapore as a closed system has remained largely unchanged over 20 years.