Why did the PAP get such a poor polling percent this year?
Today, let me analyse the reasons that led to the downfall of PAP in terms of the General elections 2011. Here are some statistics to show the number of votes attained as an overall percentage:
Year 2001 : 75.3%
Year 2011 : 60.1%
It can be seen that there has been a large dip in the number of votes the PAP has received this year, and this should be, in my opinion, a wakeup call to the government to self examine themselves.
What went wrong?
Negligence
First and foremost, the PAP has been closed towards the people’s views on issues, making themselves oblivious to what the people of Singapore were going through.
For example, it was reported in the Straits Times that Khaw Boon Wah, minister of health for Singapore, paid only $8 for a treatment for his heart surgery due to the many subsidies he received. With this, he claimed how great Medisave and Medishield were. However, what he was oblivious to was that, the people of Singapore paid by the thousands for a heart surgery. How did the minister get such a cheap price? People were complaining .This made people very angry as the minister does not even know that the policy he mentioned only worked for a small group of people. He was unaware about the reality being that medical care was really expensive and not enough has been done to help the citizens.
Admits mistakes at the eleventh hour
Why did the government not realise or admit the mistakes that resulted to challenges Singapore faced today? Just before the elections, it can be heard all over the radios, televisions, that the prime ministers apologise for the rising cost of living etc. Also, why was there this "Talk with the Prime Minister" show to allow communication between the government and citizens only one month before the election?
Before this, no mention of these problems were ever made. Why was this the case? The PAP claims to be a responsible, honest party, but I think by doing this, they violated their values that people cherished. In my opinion, the government could have identified these problems, and implement solutions way before the elections. This is also a problem of negligence. The government did not even know that such problems exist.
Weak candidates
Another crucial factor was the candidates the government sent in. A large number of candidates which will form the Parliament were mostly newcomers and had little or no experience on politics. What I feel was the worst thing the government did was: to put candidates just to feel up empty seats or to take over from the senior politicians.
The most controversial figure would be Tin Pei Ling. The way she presents herself says it all. Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong even admitted later that "Tin Pei Ling was a factor of weakness". This shows that the PAP did not vet through their candidates properly before sending them for the elections. A sign of arrogance, this was also not accepted by the public.
What is the takeaway I got from this general elections?
From this General elections, I learnt that I should not take what I have for granted. Whatever we have, we must treasure. Let me give an analogy. People do not live forever, one will grow old someday and eventually pass away from the face of the Earth. In this limited time that person is with us, if we do not tell the person what we want to tell, we might never get a second chance. The same thing applies for the General elections. If the government does not look after its citizens before the next election, the government might lose its place, and there might never be a second chance to reclaim it once the trust from the citizens is lost.
Another takeaway from this General elections would be the result of complacency. In my opinion, the root of all the problems the PAP faced this year was complacency. There are many examples to show how the PAP were complacent, such as not being receptive to ideas, poorly organised new team of candidates and refusal to admit mistakes right from the beginning. Let us not follow the emperor in ancient China, where the doors were closed to the outside world. Complacency will result to a downfall.
Conclusion
Nonetheless, PAP has managed to retain its government to a large extent. Let this be a second chance to prove to the citizens of Singapore that the PAP has what it takes to govern Singapore in the next elections, and make the people of Singapore have no doubts next time when casting their votes.
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Dear Nicholas,
ReplyDeleteI feel that instead of just criticising the PAP, you can also talk about the merits of the ruling party, since it is quite unfair to say that the PAP has done everything wrong and nothing correct. From there on, you can then talk about how the demerits have a greater impact on Singaporeans than its merits, if you want to argue it this way.
Sweeping statements are very hard to avoid if they are themselves subjective, since the opinions on an issue differ from person to person. For instance, under the heading “Negligence”, you talked about how the government has neglected the voices of the citizens, but what about the other parties? There is no mention of the other parties at all in this post, making it an unbalanced argument since you only consider one side of the issue. For all we know, the other parties might have neglected the citizens’ needs even more.
Next, you mentioned that “This shows that the PAP did not vet through their candidates properly before sending them for the elections.” under “Weak candidates”. However, I feel that this is a sweeping statement and is not supported by actual evidence. Have you actually seen and know the actual selection process for their candidates? Ms Tin might have a lot of negative remarks made about her, but these are subjective and she might just be an exception. Next, about the number of young candidates not having enough experience, I do agree that this is true. However, statistics have shown that other opposition parties have a younger average age (look at Nathan’s blog), so following from you line of argument does it mean that the opposition parties are worse off?
Regards,
Ivan
Hi Ivan,
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree that I have only criticised the PAP, and decided not to look at other parties is because I was just trying to point out the flaws of the PAP.
Anyway thanks for the comment. I might add some more stuff in later.
Regards,
Nicholas