Session IV: The changing nature of politics in Singapore
Cherian chairing the session.
Dr Terence Chong. Fellow Regional Social and Cultural Studies, ISEAS.
Tan Tarn How:
Q&A:
student from RI made the best summary that we need to have fairness and allow blogging, podcasts etc etc.
Friday, June 02, 2006
Session III - The Future of the parties
Chaired by Gillian and panelists included Derek da Cunha, Indranee Rajah, Sylvia Lim, Vincent Yeo and Chee Siok Chin.
Derek da Cunha:
- The 06 distribution of popular vote:
wp: 38.4%, sda: 32.5%, sdp: 23.2%, pap: 66.6%
- three themes: performance of the parties, issues and trends in SGP, prospects and trends of the parties
- SDP's fortunes are out of whack because of their loose canons.
- SDA's politics is gentlemanly because of Chiam ST
- WP seems to be doing all the right things, post-JBJ. There seems to be a "mainstreaming" of the WP this time around and if this keeps up, it could mean that the longtail event of WP taking over or at least being the 2nd party of a functional two-party parliament could be a reality.
Political Spectrum:
Sylvia: "Worker's Party: Hope For The Future?"
2006: Pleasant Surprises:
- fate of SM Goh's "mission" - a disaster.
- open rejection of selective upgrading
- role of cyber community despite threat of illegality
- voter behaviour pre and post election
Awakening of politics in the population - forced to make a choice? Exercising the vote.
Vincent Yeo: SDA, exco member of National Solidarity Party: I just felt that he was rambling and really could not get a sense of what he was trying to propose except at the very end when he stated that the loose coalition of parties that form the SDA could be merged into one party for the next election. So, no more PKNS, NSP, and whoever else makes up the SDA. Probably a good thing.
Chee Siok Chin: SDP exco member. Are opposition political parties in control of their future? SDP's future uncertain because of the suit from the father and son team. She reported that at a NUSS event last week, she repeated the call for election reform citing the excessively unfair stacking of the field in favour of the PAP. Roadmap for Democracy: many areas for reform, 1) reform has to come from the people not from the ruling party. People have to work for reform. June 27th case on declaring 2006 elections null and void.
Indranee: people and policies. cyberspace? Disappointed (perhaps set my expectations too high) that there was nothing new in what she had to say. She is a 2nd term non-elected member of parliament - a WOMP (Walk Over MP) - ie, no moral right to the seat in parliament even if the law says she can.
Comment by Cherian George:
"A tale of two parties. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It used to be the best of times for sdp and worst of times for wp. those were the days. how it has changed! and dramatically too. hard to believe that it was all the doing the of the PAP and the media. Image can be fashioned not only be foisted upon you." This was in reponse to Siok Chin's comment that the compliant media made her and the SDP look like morons while the WP and others were not treated as harshly.
Chaired by Gillian and panelists included Derek da Cunha, Indranee Rajah, Sylvia Lim, Vincent Yeo and Chee Siok Chin.
Derek da Cunha:
- The 06 distribution of popular vote:
wp: 38.4%, sda: 32.5%, sdp: 23.2%, pap: 66.6%
- three themes: performance of the parties, issues and trends in SGP, prospects and trends of the parties
- SDP's fortunes are out of whack because of their loose canons.
- SDA's politics is gentlemanly because of Chiam ST
- WP seems to be doing all the right things, post-JBJ. There seems to be a "mainstreaming" of the WP this time around and if this keeps up, it could mean that the longtail event of WP taking over or at least being the 2nd party of a functional two-party parliament could be a reality.
Political Spectrum:
Left center-left centre-right
PAP
WP
SDA
SDP
Sylvia: "Worker's Party: Hope For The Future?"
2006: Pleasant Surprises:
- fate of SM Goh's "mission" - a disaster.
- open rejection of selective upgrading
- role of cyber community despite threat of illegality
- voter behaviour pre and post election
Awakening of politics in the population - forced to make a choice? Exercising the vote.
Vincent Yeo: SDA, exco member of National Solidarity Party: I just felt that he was rambling and really could not get a sense of what he was trying to propose except at the very end when he stated that the loose coalition of parties that form the SDA could be merged into one party for the next election. So, no more PKNS, NSP, and whoever else makes up the SDA. Probably a good thing.
Chee Siok Chin: SDP exco member. Are opposition political parties in control of their future? SDP's future uncertain because of the suit from the father and son team. She reported that at a NUSS event last week, she repeated the call for election reform citing the excessively unfair stacking of the field in favour of the PAP. Roadmap for Democracy: many areas for reform, 1) reform has to come from the people not from the ruling party. People have to work for reform. June 27th case on declaring 2006 elections null and void.
Indranee: people and policies. cyberspace? Disappointed (perhaps set my expectations too high) that there was nothing new in what she had to say. She is a 2nd term non-elected member of parliament - a WOMP (Walk Over MP) - ie, no moral right to the seat in parliament even if the law says she can.
Comment by Cherian George:
"A tale of two parties. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It used to be the best of times for sdp and worst of times for wp. those were the days. how it has changed! and dramatically too. hard to believe that it was all the doing the of the PAP and the media. Image can be fashioned not only be foisted upon you." This was in reponse to Siok Chin's comment that the compliant media made her and the SDP look like morons while the WP and others were not treated as harshly.
Session II: "Electoral Authoritarianism' No More? The Future of the political system in Singapore.
Prof Wang Gungwu. member of the board of governors of the IPS is now introducing the next session.
Panelists:Janadas Devan, Viswa Sadasivan and Ken Kwek.
Janadas:
- phlosophical analysis of 2006 elections
- seeking to be deceived?
- compares SG/MY with TW/KR/HK in the 60s. He made a good set of points about how in the 60s, MY and SG were really the leading lights in democracy, regularly held elections etc and TW/KR were ruled by generals and HK by the Brits. Those three countries were not democratic by any stretch of the imagination, and yet, 30 or so years later, they have surpassed SG in creating and maintaining a perception of liberal democracy. SG, in the meantime, has stayed stagnant. Yes, we do have regularly held elections, but there is missing the X factor.
- he suggested that the way SG evolved the political system today can be traced back to a by-election held in June/July 1995 in Hong Lim. The PAPy had lost two preceding attempts at winning that seat and when it fell vacant, the by-election was seen as a chance to prove itself to stand up to the Tengku and UMNO. When the election was over and the PAPy won that seat, there was a sense of thumping one's nose at KL which probably snowballed to the ejection of Singapore from the Federation of Malaysia on August 9 1965. The thesis is that the by-election was the turning point in the PAPy gaining stronghold in Singapore and explains how they continued to bulldoze through subsequent election. I think it is an interesting theory. In Gladwell terms, that was the tipping point. I think that there has been another tipping point at this election with the WP winning a substantial mindshare. In 10 years, we can probably verify that this was indeed the key event that toppled the PAPy's stronghold only to be replaced by another party's!
Viswa:
- larry diamond's paper quoted
- independent election commission
- most countries have it. esp commonwealth countries. Canada, USA, Malaysia, Romania, S Korea. They have tenure as well. What is it that we do not have it? Does having it make the level playing field? Who chooses the members? Will they have tenure?
- constitutional boundaries: made know well in advance. Popular belief is that is is redrawn to favour the PAP. 15K voters moved from Marine Parade to Aljunied via GerryMandering? Amazing isn't?
- Adequate time and scope for campaigning. 9 days is what we have legally and it does no one any good. Of course the PAPy benefits as they have been able to use the government machinery *before* the elections to project themselves.
- adequate and fair info in media
- pork barrel politics should be avoided. We do not have to do it, we are Singapore!
- right of citizens to vote; vote to be secret; I hoped that he would have brought up the need to invalidate the walkover scheme as it robs the very essence what it means to be able to exercise the very right to vote and participate.
- fair and established framework: law applies well. defamation action seems to work in favour of the ruling party.
- conclusion: there is no fair and complete system. we need to keep improving it none the less. Good and honest introspection.
Ken:
- every election over the last 15 years labelled "watershed". but what is a watershed election?
Q&A:
- PAP monopolizing the definition of "talent". Talent is what they define it to be and not what is generally accepted. They claim they have the "talent" within their party. How can that be an honest statement?
- "We rule, you shop" compact
- "stomachs full, minds empty"
- The US is referred to as a aircraft carrier on which any dancing and jiggling will not upset the ship, however, Singapore is a sampan which cannot afford that kind of a shake. The suggestion is that we cannot continue to be a sampan and we have to become a catamaran - two hulled and balanced. Two hulled in that we have a functioning two party system with checks and balances in parliament.
Prof Wang Gungwu. member of the board of governors of the IPS is now introducing the next session.
Panelists:Janadas Devan, Viswa Sadasivan and Ken Kwek.
Janadas:
- phlosophical analysis of 2006 elections
- seeking to be deceived?
- compares SG/MY with TW/KR/HK in the 60s. He made a good set of points about how in the 60s, MY and SG were really the leading lights in democracy, regularly held elections etc and TW/KR were ruled by generals and HK by the Brits. Those three countries were not democratic by any stretch of the imagination, and yet, 30 or so years later, they have surpassed SG in creating and maintaining a perception of liberal democracy. SG, in the meantime, has stayed stagnant. Yes, we do have regularly held elections, but there is missing the X factor.
- he suggested that the way SG evolved the political system today can be traced back to a by-election held in June/July 1995 in Hong Lim. The PAPy had lost two preceding attempts at winning that seat and when it fell vacant, the by-election was seen as a chance to prove itself to stand up to the Tengku and UMNO. When the election was over and the PAPy won that seat, there was a sense of thumping one's nose at KL which probably snowballed to the ejection of Singapore from the Federation of Malaysia on August 9 1965. The thesis is that the by-election was the turning point in the PAPy gaining stronghold in Singapore and explains how they continued to bulldoze through subsequent election. I think it is an interesting theory. In Gladwell terms, that was the tipping point. I think that there has been another tipping point at this election with the WP winning a substantial mindshare. In 10 years, we can probably verify that this was indeed the key event that toppled the PAPy's stronghold only to be replaced by another party's!
Viswa:
- larry diamond's paper quoted
- independent election commission
- most countries have it. esp commonwealth countries. Canada, USA, Malaysia, Romania, S Korea. They have tenure as well. What is it that we do not have it? Does having it make the level playing field? Who chooses the members? Will they have tenure?
- constitutional boundaries: made know well in advance. Popular belief is that is is redrawn to favour the PAP. 15K voters moved from Marine Parade to Aljunied via GerryMandering? Amazing isn't?
- Adequate time and scope for campaigning. 9 days is what we have legally and it does no one any good. Of course the PAPy benefits as they have been able to use the government machinery *before* the elections to project themselves.
- adequate and fair info in media
- pork barrel politics should be avoided. We do not have to do it, we are Singapore!
- right of citizens to vote; vote to be secret; I hoped that he would have brought up the need to invalidate the walkover scheme as it robs the very essence what it means to be able to exercise the very right to vote and participate.
- fair and established framework: law applies well. defamation action seems to work in favour of the ruling party.
- conclusion: there is no fair and complete system. we need to keep improving it none the less. Good and honest introspection.
Ken:
- every election over the last 15 years labelled "watershed". but what is a watershed election?
Q&A:
- PAP monopolizing the definition of "talent". Talent is what they define it to be and not what is generally accepted. They claim they have the "talent" within their party. How can that be an honest statement?
- "We rule, you shop" compact
- "stomachs full, minds empty"
- The US is referred to as a aircraft carrier on which any dancing and jiggling will not upset the ship, however, Singapore is a sampan which cannot afford that kind of a shake. The suggestion is that we cannot continue to be a sampan and we have to become a catamaran - two hulled and balanced. Two hulled in that we have a functioning two party system with checks and balances in parliament.
What do voters want?
Gillian is presenting the survey results. Indicative data not representative. Sample size is 985 persons.
Good set of questions being asked in the Q&A. Of them, a question about how many people did not/declined to participate in the survey was asked. According to the survey company, 70% declined. Apparently this is not entirely surprising as indicated because there seems to be a common underlying drop out rate from surveys.
This itself is interesting though. How many times when approached by survey folks outside MRT stations, did you just say no. I know I do it regularly. It is annoying and I cannot remember when it was that I last obliged with a response.
Having said that, it is probably likely that this survey - a phone survey - would have been something I would have participated in given that the topic would be of interest to me.
The person whose company did the survey said that although the turn down rate was 7 out of 10, the 30% that did agree inevitably had a lot to say. The 20 minutes which the survey was supposed to last, went on to 25, 30 minutes as the people just wanted to talk and talk.
I think this survey is interesting and is long overdue. We need to do this on a regular basis, both pre and post election. I know the ruling party does not like opinion polls done in the usual way and I think the blogging community should rise up to this and try to figure out how to do this reliably. We need baselines to do honest analysis. Somehow, the ruling party has missed the boat on this regard - and it would apprear that they still have no clue, probably being held back by Lee Sr.
Gillian is presenting the survey results. Indicative data not representative. Sample size is 985 persons.
Good set of questions being asked in the Q&A. Of them, a question about how many people did not/declined to participate in the survey was asked. According to the survey company, 70% declined. Apparently this is not entirely surprising as indicated because there seems to be a common underlying drop out rate from surveys.
This itself is interesting though. How many times when approached by survey folks outside MRT stations, did you just say no. I know I do it regularly. It is annoying and I cannot remember when it was that I last obliged with a response.
Having said that, it is probably likely that this survey - a phone survey - would have been something I would have participated in given that the topic would be of interest to me.
The person whose company did the survey said that although the turn down rate was 7 out of 10, the 30% that did agree inevitably had a lot to say. The 20 minutes which the survey was supposed to last, went on to 25, 30 minutes as the people just wanted to talk and talk.
I think this survey is interesting and is long overdue. We need to do this on a regular basis, both pre and post election. I know the ruling party does not like opinion polls done in the usual way and I think the blogging community should rise up to this and try to figure out how to do this reliably. We need baselines to do honest analysis. Somehow, the ruling party has missed the boat on this regard - and it would apprear that they still have no clue, probably being held back by Lee Sr.
Wireless is ON!
It is nice to be able to blog a conference live in Singapore. Thanks to the Orchard Hotel making available wireless - dare I say for free!
Prof Tommy Koh has just started his welcome address. I have very high regard for him and I have great expectation of this forum. So far things are looking good. There are 48 tables of about 6-9 persons each.
Prof Koh is posing a set of questions for discussion and he has just touched on "Internet" and it's influence on the election. By the looks of it, I think I am the only one blogging.
An independent elections commission? Thanks Prof Koh for bringing it up. We need it.
Arun: 400 persons here! Wow! Says that this is the first time IPS is doing a post election forum and survey. There is hope in this country after all!
a. all adullts are eligible to vote
b. vote is secret
c. all parties can contest
d. judiciary independent
e. rule of law
survey about
It is nice to be able to blog a conference live in Singapore. Thanks to the Orchard Hotel making available wireless - dare I say for free!
Prof Tommy Koh has just started his welcome address. I have very high regard for him and I have great expectation of this forum. So far things are looking good. There are 48 tables of about 6-9 persons each.
Prof Koh is posing a set of questions for discussion and he has just touched on "Internet" and it's influence on the election. By the looks of it, I think I am the only one blogging.
An independent elections commission? Thanks Prof Koh for bringing it up. We need it.
Arun: 400 persons here! Wow! Says that this is the first time IPS is doing a post election forum and survey. There is hope in this country after all!
a. all adullts are eligible to vote
b. vote is secret
c. all parties can contest
d. judiciary independent
e. rule of law
survey about
Was doing some analysis of the 06 results.
Of the total number of voters, 2,158,704, only 56.65 people were allowed to actually vote. 935,820 persons were denied their right to vote by the illegal walkovers.
The math suggests that the PAPy vote was 61.67% of the total (not sure how the 66.6% came about). Perhaps that is an average of the percentages. Need to look at the math again.
(to be updated)
Of the total number of voters, 2,158,704, only 56.65 people were allowed to actually vote. 935,820 persons were denied their right to vote by the illegal walkovers.
The math suggests that the PAPy vote was 61.67% of the total (not sure how the 66.6% came about). Perhaps that is an average of the percentages. Need to look at the math again.
(to be updated)
The Institute of Policy Studies is holding a Post Election Forum on Friday June 2nd. I will be attending it and am hoping to be able to blog about it in real time assuming that there is connectivity, failing which, I will post a summary.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Just found out that I was referenced to by Nanyang Circle. Unfortunately, I am not able to comment there because of need for an MSN account. Thanks but no thanks, MSN. There are also problems in MSN Spaces in how they render pages on a Firefox/Linux environment I live in.
A new cabinet was sworn in earlier this week. Will these chaps have any new ideas on how to move this country forward? Will the words mouthed by Loong about being inclusive ad nauseum be, once again, fodder for the Straight Times to publish verbatim? Sigh.
A new cabinet was sworn in earlier this week. Will these chaps have any new ideas on how to move this country forward? Will the words mouthed by Loong about being inclusive ad nauseum be, once again, fodder for the Straight Times to publish verbatim? Sigh.
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