YSL: PAP-WP 2-Party System

[Ramseth]

Two-party political model can work in Singapore


I refer to CNA ‘PM Lee says two-party political model cannot work in Singapore’ (16th Nov 2008)

For political change to be effective, this change must not take place intra-party-wise but inter-party-wise, where change is based on the development of a functioning democratic framework and where effective political competition is in place.

Also it is rather peculiar for a leader of an open-economy, who understands the logic of economic competition to proclaim the merits of non-competition in the political sphere.

Tackling the economic crisis indeed need both a policy and political response. Naturally, for a political response to be effective, Singapore has to build up this functional democratic mechanism of checks-&-balances in Parliament, specifically via the voting in of more WP MPs in the coming General Elections.

For a start, 6 – 12 WP MPs in Parliament will form the preliminary basis, to check and balance an unrestrained PAP government in the areas of leading Singaporeans and implementing policies. It is certainly in the interest of Singapore for WP to provide Singaporeans a so-called ‘alternative political leadership insurance’.

Consider this, the presence of 6 – 12 WP MPs in Parliament is in actual fact less than 15% of seats represented in the current Parliament. Will a mere 15% of alternative WP representation in Parliament dent PAP dominance?

In reality, Singaporeans have nothing much to lose to vote for the WP. The political reassurance to this insurance is - If WP MPs are really not up to the mark and fail to deliver during our term of office, voters should and can easily kick us out the following GE.

However this initial 15% build up of WP representation will play the crucial role, in the charting of Singapore’s immediate future, so that when ‘something is to go terribly wrong’ with the ruling party, Singaporeans will readily have an established platform to take upon the government, based on the foundations laid by the WP.

Therefore, the WP is an independent political force that seeks to break the PAP hegemony by increasing our parliamentary representation by another 5 to 11 seats in the next General Elections. Where WP will consistently strive to be a moral conscience of our country, where our MPs will speak up justly, responsibly and courageously for our people.

For a small country, Singapore must caution and insure itself against elitist politics of the One Party system. Singaporeans must ensure that there is political competition and credible alternative partisan representation in Parliament to ensure that the present elitist PAP leadership does not take its people for granted.

In the mid term, WP’s increased parliamentary representation serves as a political insurance which determine whether Singaporeans can effectively ensure that the arrogant PAP work harder, so that Singaporeans can continue to enjoy stability and good governance in the long term.

http://yawshinleong.blogspot.com/2008/11/two-party-political-model-can-work-in.html

 

[Ramseth]

Shin Leong, though I agree with the gist of your article, I find it rather a bit on the arrogant side. Why not "Opposition" as a whole instead of just "WP". For why must it be WP? Why not SPP, NSP, SDP or others?

Could WP contest all wards in Singapore to give all voters a real choice to decide on a 2-party system? WP couldn't even contest half of Singapore on its own, not even one-third. And you start talking about a PAP-WP 2-party system. It sounds arrogant to me, a WP member. How it sounds to non-WP opposition members and supporters, I shudder to imagine.

I'll of course support WP to start with winning a GRC and/or 15% of the seats. But that's just the starting point to talk about WP as party to a 2-party system, a point which we haven't even arrived at yet. At this point, WP shouldn't be belittling or disregarding other opposition parties.

 

[Ah Guan]

Strange article coming from a PAP-voting WP candidate

 

[zhihau]

Shin Leong, though I agree with the gist of your article, I find it rather a bit on the arrogant side. Why not "Opposition" as a whole instead of just "WP". For why must it be WP? Why not SPP, NSP, SDP or others?

Could WP contest all wards in Singapore to give all voters a real choice to decide on a 2-party system? WP couldn't even contest half of Singapore on its own, not even one-third. And you start talking about a PAP-WP 2-party system. It sounds arrogant to me, a WP member. How it sounds to non-WP opposition members and supporters, I shudder to imagine.

I'll of course support WP to start with winning a GRC and/or 15% of the seats. But that's just the starting point to talk about WP as party to a 2-party system, a point which we haven't even arrived at yet. At this point, WP shouldn't be belittling or disregarding other opposition parties.

i was thinking along the lines of a coalition Government... i embrace diversity

 

[cleareyes]

i was thinking along the lines of a coalition Government... i embrace diversity

Kind of unlikely to happen unless u r talking abt 40 WP MPs in the 84 seat parliment. Since in that case PAP would not have 2/3 majority to pass any laws, then a coalition is possible, yet knowing PAP, such a situation would not be allowed at least for the moment.

perhaps real change can only take place when old man is not ard anymore.

 

[Sideswipe]

I hope that WP should demand for Proportional Representation in Parliament. We can remove the NCMP and NMP seats and give at least 20 MPs seats to be divided by party nationwide votes.

In a constituency election, it is about the individual + the party + local issues. Parliament is selecting the political party to form the cabinet and the govt. Thus voters should be given a 2nd vote to vote for their favored political party based on party policies and national issues.

This way, even the walkover constituencies voters get a chance to vote for a political party of their choice.

and the recent Town Councils investment failures tell us that we should have local elections again. The elected MP can stay as the head of the constituency to be monitored by a group of town councilors all elected through the ballot boxes.
local elections can open up further opportunities for more aspiring political wannabes.

 

[Avantas]

yeah rite i believe

 

[zhihau]

Kind of unlikely to happen unless u r talking abt 40 WP MPs in the 84 seat parliment. Since in that case PAP would not have 2/3 majority to pass any laws, then a coalition is possible, yet knowing PAP, such a situation would not be allowed at least for the moment.

perhaps real change can only take place when old man is not ard anymore.

it's more like hoping new parties would be formed ;p

 

[scroobal]

Strange article coming from a PAP-voting WP candidate

That I have to agree. He needs to write to himself first before engaging anyone else.

 

[scroobal]

Shin Leong, though I agree with the gist of your article, I find it rather a bit on the arrogant side. Why not "Opposition" as a whole instead of just "WP". For why must it be WP? Why not SPP, NSP, SDP or others?

Could WP contest all wards in Singapore to give all voters a real choice to decide on a 2-party system? WP couldn't even contest half of Singapore on its own, not even one-third. And you start talking about a PAP-WP 2-party system. It sounds arrogant to me, a WP member. How it sounds to non-WP opposition members and supporters, I shudder to imagine.

I'll of course support WP to start with winning a GRC and/or 15% of the seats. But that's just the starting point to talk about WP as party to a 2-party system, a point which we haven't even arrived at yet. At this point, WP shouldn't be belittling or disregarding other opposition parties.

I agree and highly presumptious at that.

He should argue on merits and demerits of one party system and call for empirical evidence of such a model benefiting the country and its people in an open and transparent manner. PAP will have a hard time justifying that.

 

[Porfirio Rubirosa]

Made even worse with Pappy Teo Ho Pin's latest arrogance, cheek and contempt, "be thankful".

That I have to agree. He needs to write to himself first before engaging anyone else.

 

[Ramseth]

Made even worse with Pappy Teo Ho Pin's latest arrogance, cheek and contempt, "be thankful".

What do you expect from him when a WP candidate who actually contested again the Prime Minister voted for him and announced it publicly?

 

[Adidas]

it will not happen during the next election.
maybe another election when those yuppies are eligible to vote,we can see it happen.
the opposition also need to renew themselves,just like PAP.
if the same people hold on to power or make the decision,then it is very difficult.

 

[rainnix]

KNN, YSL is not fit to be a politician. Bo ambition at all! Talking about 15% representation (or talking about the actual capacity of Workers Party?) in which the PAP can still pass laws as they wish.

An ideal would be 60% PAP, 15% WP and 25% other AP for the next election. This YSL still have narrow views and could not see the bigger scheme of things.

 

[The_Latest_H]

First of all, as one of the senior WP guys, I think its expected of him to be biased about his own party, and as such he would insist that a two party system can exist with PAP & the WP as the main parties, similar to the UK, where the electorate will switch the ruling parties between Labour and the Tories from period to period.

And of course, in the UK, there are many other smaller parties that cater to those who have more liberal or more conservative views, and these smaller parties play the role of spoiler or something more significant in some issues.

Having said that, when he's biased, he should also expect that some(who may or may not support the other opposition parties) will view him as being a bit over-the-top in exerting the claim that only WP has the biggest chance of being the main opposition party. That view of him by some is only to be expected and I think, its sometimes a bit regrettable.

Still, he has the right to state his views, and I respect him dearly for that. As for whether I agree with him or not is, however, something private and one which I will only share with him in a private conversation.

Sidenote: I must mention though that because we are in a Westminster Parliamentary system, and not a Presidential-Senate-House system, building up a large opposition minority party/coalition in Parliament takes a lot of time, effort, and that takes sweat, blood, tears and will be an emotion ride. Only until we build that amount where we have a significant number to challenge the ruling party- and with time, we could- there's no way we can just win the elections in one scoop.

We need to win more than 51% of the vote, and then more than 51% of the seats in Parliament, to form a new government. So can we beat the PAP in 2011 in just one election? No, because we are not in a Presidential system of government presently- and I don't see it changing soon. So building up the numbers are like building a new building: build the solid foundations first, then we proceed on the floors above.

 

[Ramseth]

I accept that it's his point of view. But I'm disputing his point of view. Yes?

 

[The_Latest_H]

I accept that it's his point of view. But I'm disputing his point of view. Yes?

Everyone has the right to disagree with him- that's pretty much true, my friend.

 

[Porfirio Rubirosa]

Groundnotes' Blog

Our very own “lipstick on a pig”
November 19, 2008

PM Lee has drawn lots of fire since he spoke at the People’s Action Party conference last Sunday. The bulk of the criticisms were for two points he made. Firstly, political change in Singapore cannot come from the opposition but from within the PAP; and secondly, a two-party system is not suitable for Singapore because we don’t have enough talent.



These two arguments have been made over the years ad nauseam in a variety of guises by various ministers and the rebuttal is always the same. But the sheer frequency and insouciance with which they resurface leads one to conclude that our leaders do not really pay attention to these rebuttals. They choose to believe that the PAP will stay corrupt-free and competent for all eternity, ever able to renew itself at will according to the challenges that lie ahead; hence the ability to look inward for change.



They choose to believe that out of 4m Singaporeans we will not be able to sustain a two-party system unlike other small countries, say, Denmark (5.8m), Finland (5.2m), New Zealand (4.1m) and so on. The weight of evidence against their arguments seems lost on these supposedly highly intelligent individuals.



Or is it?



It would be far too easy to call our ministers ‘stupid’, conclude that they are ‘idiots’ and move on to the next page. I happen to believe that our ministers, for all their many faults, are intelligent and rational people. I sincerely do. The problem is not that they are dumb; the problem is that they think we are dumb.



After all, if you were speaking to someone you believe was intelligent would you repeat the above arguments over and over again? Would you not give them enough credit to ask, erm, isn’t it more realistic to expect a ruling party to atrophy in the long term?



There are two reasons why they believe we’re dumb. Firstly, one of the side-effects of believing we’re a perfect meritocracy is that those at the top assume that they are better than the rest of society. Talent rises to the top, the mediocre are human sediment that line the river bed – it’s a perfectly logical assumption that our leaders take to heart. This myth of meritocracy sets the condition for treating the rest of society like sheep to be led and donkeys to be patronized.



Secondly, Singaporeans’ well known obsession with so-called “bread and butter” issues like job, salaries and the economy has led the PAP to realise that as long as it can stimulate economic growth or sustain job creation, we are pretty much putty in its hands. This means that as long as Singaporeans have jobs, our leaders can make arguments of astounding illogicality and we won’t really mind, because we don’t really care. And to a large extent, they are right. We have signed the Faustian pact (material affluence for political compliance) and one of its clauses obliges us to accept such illogical arguments as guidance from people who know best. Caveat emptor.



So in order to reach out to Singaporeans, our leaders strike an intellectual tone aimed at the lowest common denominator. The PAP doesn’t speak to intellectuals, academics, sophisticated cosmopolitans, but to their idea of what the ‘Singapore heartlander’ is. In their minds, this Singapore heartlander is a four-room HDB dweller with O levels and the resulting political discourse is designed for such as audience. This lowest-common-denominator effect is evident in The Straits Times too. The Straits Times positions its writing and features for O level standard readership. Anyone with greater intellectual yearnings will have to look elsewhere.



How does the PAP patronize Singaporeans? Let me count the ways. Actually I won’t because I’ve too much work to do. I’ll just dwell on two examples.



#1: In the effort to reach out to young Singaporeans, the PAP has embarked on an extreme makeover. It has enlisted its post-65 MPs to present a hip and cool image to young voters. What resulted was the notoriously cring- worthy pain-inducing hip hop dance by these MPs at the Chingay parade. I hear there is more to come. The ISA should have been enacted on these MPs for the national good.



#2: PM Lee, at the conference, announced that the PAP would now use new generation communications like Youtube “to get our message across in a serious way, but in a way which people can accept, and we’ll resonate with them on our website and on many other places in cyberspace.”



What do these two examples have in common? They assume that Singaporeans are easily impressed by bright lights and flashy moves. They assume that as long as the message’s medium changes, the message can remain the same. They offer no new policy changes, no new political direction, but more of the same illiberal semi-authoritarian trust-me-you-know-I’m-right attitude, only this time packaged in a sexier soundbite.




For the PAP, being ‘cool’ and ‘hip’ is not an attitude or a worldview but merely about imitation and mimicry. And as we all know, trying hard to be cool just ain’t cool. It’s like your 58 year old father in torn jeans, with a ear-stud, Metallica t-shirt and pony-tail. He’s more likely to put out his hip than to be hip.



As Obama said, “you put lipstick on a pig, its still a pig”. But the PAP expects us to believe differently. How’s that for a patronizing attitude?



A sober thought to conclude. The longest ever ruling party was the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of Mexico. The PRI ruled for just over 70 years from 1929 until its loss to the National Action Party in 2000. The second longest reign of a ruling party was Paraguay’s Colorado Party which formed government for 61 years since 1947. It was defeated this year in 2008.



So you ask yourself: 70 and 61 years are the longest a single party has stayed in power in a democracy before it ran out of ideas and good people (when speaking about Mexico and Paraguay I mean ‘good’ in the broadest possible sense). The PAP has formed government since 1959, making it 49 years in power. Every realistic and history-conscious Singaporean must assume that we have a window of 15-20 years of good government based on today’s evidence. Beyond this is any one’s guess.

 

[The_Latest_H]

Politics is corrupting in nature, especially with the fame and power that comes with it. That's why in most democratic countries, top leaders often don't last for more than 8 to 10 years- and those who stayed too long often suffer from poor personal approval ratings.

Some even have, like Bush Jr, have both dismal personal and job approval ratings.

I mean, if they keep on insisting that one party rule is better, then why not tell them to look back at chinese imperial history? One Dynasty to rule them for a few hundred years, and by the end of it all, the ruling family were so fractured, and so weak that there were uprisings over the country by then. And that was at a time when it would take a person one year to travel from Xianyang to Rome.

Now its even harder for any family to rule for a hundred years, let alone a few hundred. And if LHL proves to be nothing like the leader that his father claims, the Lee rule may not even last beyond LHL.

 

[Porfirio Rubirosa]

Nov 21, 2008
TWO-PARTY SYSTEM
Why Singapore's political system works

I REFER to Mr Gilbert Goh's letter on Wednesday, 'Two-party system better'.
He argues against groupthink - and we agree. Within the People's Action Party (PAP), we embrace views from across the political spectrum - and our parliamentary debates demonstrate the strength of our diversity amid unity.

A two-party or multi-party system is no guarantee against groupthink. In some countries, competing parties - to capture the swing vote - have moved so close to each other as to become nearly indistinguishable, even as those without access to special interest lobby groups or patronage suffer.

Elsewhere, two-party politics has become the politics of obstruction, with government decisions blocked and debates filibustered. Indecision and paralysis prevail, even in the depths of economic crisis - and it is the ordinary men and women who suffer for it.

In yet other nations, multi-party politics has led to division, as short-term sectarianism trumps the long-term national interest.

The key issue is not the form of the democracy, but the results of the political process.

Our current dominance is not a pre-ordained right. Every election we must earn anew, at the ballot box, the mandate of our fellow Singaporeans. It is a process which is honest and open to contest.

Our political system brought Singapore from Third World to First. In partnership with the people of Singapore, PAP governments have kept this nation afloat through the 1970s oil shocks, the 1980s recession, the 1990s Asian financial crisis, the post-9/11 aftermath and Sars. Which other party in the world has this depth of experience?

Were this accumulated wisdom and concentration of talent to be dispersed across multiple parties, Singapore would be the poorer for it. And in these times of global economic turmoil, it would be foolhardy - and a disservice to our fellow citizens - to throw away what has kept Singapore strong these 50 years.

But we will not rest upon our laurels. The PAP welcomes the scrutiny, interest and passion of the people of Singapore. We continually seek to improve ourselves.

To those who call for more diversity, I invite you to come talk with us, to join us in our community work and to see what we do. We may surprise your scepticism, even as we find common cause in our aspirations for a better Singapore.

Dr Tan Wu Meng
Organising Secretary
Young PAP