FIGHTING THE FEAR FACTOR

By Nigel Tan

Chief Editor

 

With just hours remaining until Singapore heads to the polls, the burning question on everyone’s lips is whether or not the PAP will be returned to power with yet another landslide majority.

 

Judging from the enormous crowds at opposition rallies and the avalanche of anti-PAP sentiment on the internet, one might be tempted to think that there will be a large swing against the ruling party, with a very real possibility of opposition victories in one or more GRCs.

 

Anyone who has been around for long enough will know, however, that the PAP has never really been able to count on its voters being vocal or expressive. If you think that crowds of 30,000 to 40,000 in Aljunied are impressive, quite frankly, they are not. The Workers’ Party managed to draw crowds of twice that size in Cheng San in 1997 – and even that was not enough for them to see them past the finish line on Polling Day. It seems that the PAP’s “silent majority” never makes itself heard, but always makes itself felt.

 

Where does this silent majority come from? According to socio-political blog Yawning Bread, the PAP has very few true-blue supporters. A huge segment of Singaporeans vote for the PAP out of fear. They fear all kinds of consequences if they vote against the ruling party – ranging from personal reprisals to the stock market crashing. Let’s take a look at why people are afraid to vote against the PAP:

 

 

1) FEAR OF INSTABILITY

 

Since the days when Mr Lee Kuan Yew was Prime Minister, PAP leaders have repeatedly warned that Singapore will be destabilised if it does not have a strong government. They have said that if the PAP loses at the polls, investors will pull out of Singapore, causing the economy to crash. People will see their assets – from their equity portfolios to their property – devalued overnight. Singaporeans will lose their jobs. Singaporean women might even have to work as maids in other countries.

 

Thanks to the complicity of the state-controlled mainstream media, the PAP has been able to drive home this message so strongly that many people actually believe that Singapore will suffer an economic apocalypse if there were to be a “freak result”.

 

Of course, such doomsday scenarios have been grossly exaggarated and could not be further from the truth. While it is true that PAP policy is extremely pro-business and pro-investment, multinational companies are unlikely to pull out of Singapore just because a few opposition MPs are elected into Parliament. Many developed nations have seen governments change; it is just part and parcel of the democratic process.

 

Nonetheless, Singapore’s electorate remains politically immature, thanks to a lack of exposure and education. Students are not required to learn about the political system in schools; instead, the syllabus focuses on lionising the deeds of the PAP’s founding fathers, painting them as heroes who helped Singapore attain independence from colonial oppression. Likewise, the media does not paint a full picture of the political scene, often repeating statements made by PAP ministers as though they were gospel truths.

 

As such, for many voters, the lines between party, state and government have been blurred. They do not realise that the civil service is not part of the PAP, and that as public servants, they are obliged to serve the government of the day. This leads to an irrational fear that Singapore will collapse without the PAP, which in turn leads to votes being cast for the PAP even though people are disgruntled with their policies.

 

 

2) FEAR OF MUNICIPAL DECAY

 

Since the 1980s, the PAP has linked municipal upgrading to votes, giving priority to its own wards when it comes to national schemes such as the Lift Upgrading Programme. The Prime Minister and his predecessors have always maintained that these schemes are government programmes, and as such, voting for the opposition is depicted as voting against these programmes.

 

The two existing opposition wards, Potong Pasir and Hougang, have been placed at the back of the upgrading queue, leaving it to the local town councils to implement infrastructural improvements without any government support. When Potong Pasir MRT station was first built, its opening was delayed for a few months.

 

This approach has been roundly criticised by many opposition candidates. Pritam Singh of the WP called this “despicable” and “morally reprehensible”, but the PAP has refused to engage in any debate as to the ethics of this policy. In fact, Mr Lee Kuan Yew previously said that if voters decided to vote in an opposition MP, their wards would become “slums”, with “rubbish piling up to the third storey”.

 

Though this has never actually happened, the ability to dangle upgrading carrots has proven to be a huge advantage to the PAP, with its MPs even mocking their opponents for being unable to deliver similarly grand plans – Mr George Yeo has said that while Hougang is “not a slum”, the residents of Aljunied had higher standards than just that, and declared that there was “no contest” in terms of who was able to run the constituency better at the local level.

 

Many voters are cowed by these threats because they fear that their properties will depreciate in value if an opposition party takes over their constituency, because an opposition-run town council would not be able to provide aesthetic enhancements to the area. As such, they vote for the PAP because they think it is the only way to preserve their self-interest.

 

What they fail to consider, however, is that if a critical mass of opposition MPs were to be elected, the PAP would not be able to selectively single out individual wards for “punishment”. For example, if two GRCs were to fall to the opposition, the PAP would almost certainly have to reconsider its policy of linking upgrading to votes, since it would not be alienating just 30,000 voters, but over 300,000 – or more than 10 per cent of the total electorate.

 

 

3) FEAR OF PERSONAL REPRISAL

 

The fear of personal reprisal for voting against the PAP stems from a myth that voting is not secret. Though opposition candidates and civil society activists have taken pains to explain the voting process in detail, many less-educated voters still remain convinced that the government has a way to track their voting records by virtue of the serial numbers that are displayed on polling cards.

 

Though the PAP has never attempted to lead anyone to think that voting is not secret, it has also never come out strongly to rebut this rumour. Many older Singaporeans have a genuine fear that their lives will be affected if they vote against the PAP because they grew up in an era of vindictive personal politics led by Mr Lee Kuan Yew. They saw politicians such as Francis Seow, Tang Liang Hong and J B Jeyaretnam bankrupted, imprisoned and forced into self-imposed exile, and even though such tactics have not been used under Mr Lee Hsien Loong’s administration, the memories are still raw.

 

These voters then influence their children not to vote for the opposition because it might result in them not being to get a civil service job, not being able to apply for an HDB flat, or not being able to get their children a place in a kindergarten or primary school.

 

While the origin of these rumours is not known, they are still very pervasive in Singapore despite the existence of a law that prohibits people from influencing others to believe that their vote is not secret.

 

Opposition politicians have taken great pains to emphasise voting secrecy at their rallies, with many of them even using themselves as examples – for example, Mr Chiam See Tong has never been bankrupted or jailed, and Ms Sylvia Lim still holds on to her lecturing job at a polytechnic. Mr Tan Jee Say, a former senior civil servant, has testified that he was promoted ahead of his peers in the civil service even though he voted for the opposition back then. However, despite these messages, the fear still exists, and it is likely to influence a substantial portion of the votes in any election.

 

 

THE BATTLE AGAINST FEAR

 

Almost every opposition party has addressed the issue of fear during the recently concluded campaign. Mr Chiam, who commands widespread support despite his advanced age and frail health, has spoken on this issue on an almost nightly basis, asking voters to be courageous and to follow his example. Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam, the leader of the tiny Reform Party, urged his supporters to “vote like lions”. Dr Vincent Wijeysingha of the SDP summed it up perfectly when he said likened the PAP to a coil of rope in a dark room that has been mistaken for a snake.

 

He said:

 

“If you go into a dark room, and you see what looks like a snake, you will come out of the room. All you do is switch the light on, and then you realize it’s not a snake, but a coil of rope. The PAP’s threats are like a coil of rope. They are terribly frightened that you will put the lights on – the lights in your heart and in your head, and then you will see that those threats are harmless.”

 

With Singapore’s electoral demographics having changed substantially from 2006 – with one third of all voters being under the age of 35 – it remains to be seen whether the irrational fears of the past will still play a big part in deciding the election.

 

The advent of the internet and social media has already proven to be a game-changer, with the PAP no longer able to singularly drive opinion through its subjugation of the mainstream media. But in constituencies with contests that are too close to call, the votes might yet be swung by older generation voters who still cower under the spectre of an invisible bogeyman.

 

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The author is the Chief Editor of The Satay Club.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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