Good morning, it’s Nomination Day and We, The Citizens is now in full GE mode! I initially had ideas to write longer-form pieces but the more I look at all the news articles, social media posts and podcasts, the more it feels like I'll be overwhelming people with 1,500–2,000-word essays. For this issue, I’ve opted for shorter observations/arguments, sectioned out to make it easier to skim if you’re short on time. The good thing about this one-person newsletter is that I can be flexible and adapt to what I think would be most helpful at any given point in time, so let’s see how we go with the rest of the election.
The deluge
If you’re already feeling like it’s been A Lot this election, you’re not alone. Even before Nomination Day there’s been plenty of movement with the introduction of new candidates, incumbent PAP parliamentarians (including those who only served a single term) stepping down, and parties claiming and/or relinquishing territory in an election without prior horse-trading among the opposition. By this afternoon we’ll know for sure who’s standing where and whether there’ll really be as many multi-cornered fights as anticipated. Then the mad rush to Polling Day begins in earnest in one of the most hotly contested elections—if not the most hotly contested election—we've seen so far.
And still the campaigning period is at the legal minimum of nine days.
Opposition parties have already spoken out about how this super-short campaigning period is unfair to them, especially since the new electoral boundaries were released only 28 days before Parliament was dissolved. This tight timeframe is also unfair to voters, because we’re left with hardly any time to digest all the information before we have to make a decision. Every aspect of a general election that tilts the playing field and makes it harder for the opposition comes at the expense of Singaporeans being able to make considered, informed choices based on fair terms.
Whose big idea was it anyway?
The Workers’ Party recently highlighted 15 of their policy proposals that they say were later adopted by the PAP government. Petir, the PAP’s (often rather smug and snarky) publication, shot back: “They agree so much with the PAP, they claim our policies came from them. Imitation, as they say, is the sincerest form of flattery.” Some of these policy changes, the PAP insists, had been brought up by PAP MPs even before the WP put them forward. While WP supporters cheer for their party’s impact, PAP supporters sneer at the WP for trying to “claim credit”.
How should we measure the impact of opposition parliamentarians? The make-up of the last Parliament meant we could never have expected a direct impact from the WP in passing, rejecting or amending bills: there simply weren’t enough of them in the House to do any of those things. If we want the opposition to be more effective and impactful in law-making, then we’re going to need more, not fewer, opposition legislators in Parliament.
Until the day we have enough opposition MPs to make a bigger difference in Parliament, I’d argue that the major contributions of the opposition (regardless of party) lie in enriching public discourse and expanding Singaporeans’ political imagination. By probing weaknesses and flaws in the ruling party’s policies and making proposals of their own—even if these currently have little likelihood of being passed into law—opposition parties bring up ideas and points of discussion that the PAP might either not have considered before or might have wanted to suppress (in service of their party’s interests but not necessarily that of Singaporeans). Opposition parties and civil society groups can provide alternative perspectives, present new possibilities, conduct public education and generate momentum for change. It keeps those in power on their toes. Even if some ideas or suggestions might have occurred to the ruling party before only to be discarded or put on the back burner, by bringing it up again (and again and again) in Parliament and elsewhere, opposition parties can keep the discussion going and build pressure to push the government to move more quickly on necessary changes.
For example, when we look at the various GE2025 manifestos, we see recurring proposals across opposition parties: exempting essential goods from GST, introducing freedom of information legislation, implementing a minimum/living wage and expanding unemployment insurance, among others. It’s already valuable that they’re putting these proposals in their manifestos for Singaporeans to consider during this (very short) time; if elected, opposition MPs would be able to bring these up in the next Parliament, too, keeping these discussions alive even if they don’t have the numbers to push them into law. Without an opposition presence, we’ll be left even more at the mercy of a single party working on an ‘own time, own target’ basis.
Is it based on data or just ~vibes~?
Under Section 78C of the Parliamentary Elections Act, it’s illegal to publish the results of “any election survey, or any content purporting to be any result of an election survey, during the period beginning with the day the writ of election is issued for an election and ending with the close of all polling stations on polling day at the election”.
This ban was introduced in 2001, alongside regulations on online campaigning. Lee Yock Suan, who was Minister for Information and the Arts at the time, justified the prohibition by saying that “opinion polls or surveys often give the illusion that they reflect public opinion on certain issues and could mislead the public”. He raised the possibility of hastily conducted, poorly designed polls with unreliable results and argued that opinion polls could also lead to a “‘horse-race’ mentality, which can distract voters from learning the candidates’ qualifications and their positions on key issues”.
These downsides are, in fairness, genuine possibilities. Surveys and polls could be badly done and wind up confusing or misinforming people. But it’s not helpful to only cherry-pick the worst case scenarios and downsides without acknowledging that there are more beneficial things we’re trading away with a ban.
I reached out to Elvin Ong, an assistant professor at NUS’s Department of Political Science, to get his take on the pros and cons of opinion polls during an election:
In political science, one of the key roles that published opinion polls on candidates or political parties play is to coordinate voter expectations. Oftentimes, when voters vote, their vote is partly based on perceptions of how they think others will vote, particularly when elections are competitive on the margins. In the absence of published opinion polls, voters are voting in an information vacuum. However, if voters know what their fellow voters think through published opinion polls, they might take that information into account and change their vote.
This is related to the notion of the “freak election”—which Cherian George explains here—because without opinion polling data, voters aren’t able to coordinate and vote strategically to achieve the outcome that we want.
This is part of a broader theme in Singapore. We are, generally speaking, a fairly information-poor society with a severe asymmetry when it comes to data—the government/ruling party has access to a lot; the rest of us, not so much. While it's possible that dodgy survey results could circulate, a less information-poor society would have multiple institutions—from the government to universities to independent research institutes—conducting their own surveys and polls and publishing the results. A more data and media literate populace would therefore be able to evaluate for themselves how reliable a survey/poll might be, and also cross-reference results.
In any case, it's not like dodgy information doesn't circulate in Singapore anyway—during the last election, there were unsubstantiated WhatsApp whisper campaigns and supposed bookies' odds that rated the parties' chances. And if the PAP is still worried that polling data might distract people from candidates' positions on key issues, it looks like some candidates don't even have positions on key issues for us to miss out on...
The availability of opinion polling data is, understandably, not going to rank particularly highly in the list of urgently needed electoral reforms or the issues that will be on voters' minds over the next week-and-a-half. But it is related to why multiple parties are proposing freedom of information legislation—which is about all sorts of data—in their manifestos this GE. Everything is political and connected, folks!
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