Do you feel like you might need to take leave from your job just to keep up with what’s happening with the election? Don’t worry, some of us (i.e. me) are introverts with no children and even less of a social life, so you just do what you need to. I’ve got you covered GE news-wise.
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The fight begins
GE2025 kicked off for real today with Nomination Day. 211 candidates were nominated; they come from 11 political parties, plus two independent candidates. Here are some of the developments that leapt out at me:
A walkover at Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC
GE2025 might be one of the most hotly contested general elections in Singapore ever, but not for the residents of Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC. The Workers’ Party was expected to field a team there but by the time nominations closed no WP candidates had filed their papers, leaving the five-member People’s Action Party team the only ones standing and therefore automatically elected.
WP has issued a statement citing the electoral boundary change as the reason for their decision to withdraw from Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC. This is naturally highly disappointing for residents who were eager to vote and had expected WP to give the PAP another run for their money, but this surprise move by the WP highlights just how much of an impact these opaque, confusing electoral boundary changes can have on opposition parties. It’s not just a matter of whether there are enough good candidates; for every candidate or team that runs, the party needs money and manpower to manage the campaign, organise rallies, go canvassing, etc. It’s a huge undertaking, so parties need to be smart and practical about how to deploy the resources they have.
Masagos Zulkifli, who’s leading the PAP team that’s going head-to-head with WP in Tampines GRC, says WP’s leadership should answer for leaving Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC uncontested. Others might see this as a betrayal of the voters of Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC. But if we’re really looking for someone to blame, I suggest directing our attention to the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee.
PAP ministers flung across the island
Gan Kim Yong, the current deputy prime minister, has been yanked from Chua Chu Kang GRC and hurled across Singapore to Punggol GRC to lead the PAP team against a WP team led by the party’s new star candidate Harpreet Singh. The PAP must be hoping for the weight of a deputy prime minister to hold down the fort for them in Punggol. It’s yet another big job for Gan, who hadn't even been that keen to be DPM in the first place. Will the voters of Punggol make him work in Parliament for another five years or will they help him into retirement?
To fill the Gan-shaped hole in Chua Chu Kang GRC, Tan See Leng, the manpower minister, was pulled out of Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC at the last minute and sent to Chua Chu Kang GRC. I wonder how he feels about having been, in hindsight, so close to being elected without a fight today? 😂 😂 😂
One thing these eleventh-hour switcheroos really bring home to me is the disjoint between the dual roles of Members of Parliament in Singapore. On the one hand, MPs are also put in charge of town councils and elections are often framed in terms of serving residents and dealing with municipal issues, which then emphasises a candidate’s commitment to a particular constituency and its people. But last-minute strategic switches like what we saw with Gan and Tan today demonstrate that it’s still ultimately a political numbers game—they might portray themselves as sons or daughters of Punggol or Chua Chu Kang or Jalan Kayu or wherever, but at the end of the day candidates will go where their party thinks they’re needed to win seats in Parliament.
A four-cornered fight in Tampines GRC (but is it really?)
While residents of Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC have been left with no option, the voters in Tampines GRC are now spoilt for choice. Four parties have sent teams to the five-member GRC: PAP, WP, the People’s Power Party and the National Solidarity Party. Multi-cornered fights have usually prompted fears that the opposition vote will be split. I hope that won’t happen here; it actually seems more likely that both PPP and NSP are at risk of losing their (very expensive) election deposits. The way I see it, unless there are voters who are hardcore fans of PPP and NSP, anyone who’s hoping for a greater opposition presence in Parliament would logically go for the opposition party that has the greatest chance of winning, which is the WP.
As I said on The Online Citizen’s livestream discussion this afternoon, it’s especially crucial for smaller opposition parties—basically, anyone who isn’t WP, the Progress Singapore Party or the Singapore Democratic Party—to be able to be clear about their politics, their values, their brand and what they’re offering voters. If multi-cornered fights are going to become more common in Singapore, these parties will need to make a strong case to Singaporeans that they are distinct from the bigger opposition parties competing for the same turf because if they aren’t, then what’s the point of them? It’s never fun to have to justify your existence, but this is the reality: if you can’t persuade people that what you’re offering is substantially different, then you’ll probably get trampled by bigger, more well-resourced parties perceived as having a more established brand and higher chance of success.
Heng Swee Keat is no longer part of the PAP’s East Coast Plan
It was a surprise today when Heng Swee Keat wasn’t named on any of the papers as a candidate. He’s since written on social media that he’s stepping out of politics (at least for now). He believes that “now is the right time to make way for a new team of capable individuals who are well-placed to serve Singapore”.
Singaporeans 加油 jiayou!
This morning, as I monitored the news for Nomination Day updates, it really sank in how far Singapore has come. This is the fourth general election I’m covering in some shape or form; that’s really not that many, but even in these few cycles the change has been tremendous.
In GE2011, we were swept up by the tantalising possibilities offered by social media (namely Facebook), allowing opposition parties who always struggled for fair mainstream media coverage to bypass that gatekeeping and reach voters more directly. I remember being told by older volunteers at The Online Citizen that it was stunning that Singaporeans were beginning to shed the fear of expressing open support for opposition parties. That was the election in which it became more common to see people say on social media that they intended to vote opposition, and we were able to quickly publish our own photos contrasting the crowds at PAP rallies with those at opposition (especially WP) ones. That was the year, as Pritam Singh acknowledged today, that Aljunied voters made history by handing a GRC to WP. This was the breakthrough that showed that an opposition party could win a GRC. “Your estate is as good as any other in Singapore!” Pritam declared today at the nomination centre to cheers and applause, triggering memories of all the times the PAP had dangled estate upgrading over Singaporeans’ heads as a “vote for us or else”.
14 years later, this election feels a little messier but also more vibrant. There are more multi-cornered fights, but that’s because some parties have outgrown the need to horse-trade. The PAP’s nitpicking, bullying and harassment of opposition politicians from WP and PSP might have previously succeeded in creating the impression that politicians like Pritam and Leong Mun Wai are untrustworthy and dangerous—possibly even psychopathic, as Lee Kuan Yew said of the SDP’s Chee Soon Juan—and therefore to be avoided, but that clearly isn’t the case today. The WP’s impressive slate of new candidates is testament to that. Meanwhile, Leong went for makan and impressed a former secretary-general of the Singapore Manufacturing Federation so much the guy joined PSP and is now running as a candidate. Not bad for someone Vivian Balakrishnan sneered at for being “illiterate” and going to a “lousy school”, eh?
What caused this change? We did. At the beginning of this year I wrote about how the citizenry has changed, examining it through the lens of civil society activity. It applies to politics, too. In 2011 Singaporeans took a “leap of faith” and voted an opposition party into a GRC. GE2015 ultimately handed a big win to the PAP, but it was also the first election in decades in which every seat was contested. In 2020, when a police investigation was opened into an opposition candidate in the middle of the campaigning period, Singaporeans made #IStandWithRaeesah trend on social media and Sengkang GRC voters picked her team over the PAP. That year, the PAP was forced to acknowledge that Singaporeans had different expectations for our political landscape, that they had to work harder to “connect with young voters” and that lots of “soul-searching” was necessary.
This year, we momentarily crashed WP’s online shop with our eagerness to give them money—and many of us would have no qualms using those bags and umbrellas in public. There are more voter education resources circulating online than I’ve ever seen: from academics, from volunteer-run civil society groups, from independent media. Today, we’re pissed that one GRC has been left uncontested, when walkovers used to be so much the norm that Singaporeans in some constituencies barely got to vote at all. (For example, in 2006, 43.4% of the voters lived in constituencies with walkovers. In 2001, that percentage was a whopping 66.8%.)
We are where we are today because, bit by bit, we found our voices, we grew the courage to speak out, we donated to opposition parties and civil society groups, we stepped up to volunteer for these efforts, we put ourselves forward in civil society campaigns or as political candidates, we carried out our own political education efforts and we refused to abandon those the PAP tried to demonise. We don’t get it right all the time—far, far from it—but we’re learning to build solidarity, to overcome fear and work actively for the society we want to live in. The changes we see today, compared to one or two decades ago, weren’t handed to us by the ruling party. Singaporeans did this. This is our power. Go us!
Update log: All parties/candidates with published manifestos have been added, and there's now also an "Other Resources" section at the end with links to voter education portals, multimedia compilations and analyses.
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