SG Election (1) – Malaysian perspective

Singapore is holding 11th general election since the separation from Malaysia. It’s said as the “watershed election”, and the biggest election the country ever whereby 82 out of 87  parliament seats are up for contest (in 2006, 47 out of 84 seats were contested, one of the biggest election then). And of course I’m in Singapore right now, feeling excited to witness this biggest political event in Singapore. I felt compelled to write something about this election, for this is the first time I actually “observe” (as a layman, if I must add) an election so closely. I followed 2004 and 2008 Malaysia GE in Singapore, and in 1999 MYS GE, I knew close to nothing about politics!

Even if no one is reading this, I’ll still be happy enough to read this ten twenty years later and have a good laugh of how stupid was I

Before going into the general election, I wish to talk about a little bit of difference between Singapore and Malaysia’s election. They may have inherited from the same system, but yet the elections are quite different, here are some similarities and differences:

1. Singapore has only ONE house in their parliament, no senate. Instead, they have Non-constituencies MP and Nominated MP.
NCMPs are proportionately distribute to opposition parties according to vote share in GE. NMPs are “independent” MP.

2. Singapore has unique “Group representation constituency” (GRC) system.
It is kind of similar to having "multi-member constituency” where a constituency is represented by more than 1 member of parliament. In Singapore’s case, each GRC consists of 4 to 6 MP, and whoever wants to contest in such constituency must be able to form a team of, well, 4 to 6 candidates with at least one of them being an ethnic minority, e.g. Malay, Indian or lain-lain (others). Voters than decide which team to vote into the parliament, i.e. if you win, your whole team of candidates get to be MPs; if you lose, you get nothing.
Such voting system, in my opinion, is fundamentally unfair because a voter would not be able to choose who’s in and who’s out. You may not like one of the 4 to 6 candidates you voted for, but you can do nothing. The system is said to “enshrine minority representation in Parliament“ but I believe it is not too hard to design a fairer system. There are currently 15 of them.

3. There are some “Single member constituencies” (SMC) too!
Which is exactly the same as the kind of constituencies you see in Malaysia, one constituency one member. But how do you decide one area should be an SMC instead of a GRC? No idea. 12 of them in this election.

4. Elected MP is automatically a member of the constituency’s town council, which governs the public housing within that constituency.
In Malaysia, election of local government was disallowed since 1969.

5. Campaign material is highly regulated.
This is the only campaign materials you can see on street

A2-size (somewhere there? or maybe slightly bigger) board that’s cable-tied onto the lamppost or roadsign, or maybe a banner (the size and design is regulated too). If I’m not wrong even the flyers etc are regulated, which is obviously not the case in Malaysia…

6. Campaign rally at night is from 7 to 10 in Singapore. 7 to 12 in Malaysia?
An opposition candidate said: “Getai also open till 11, and election such big matter is allowed till 10 only!”

7. For the number of seats, Singapore has A LOT of opposition parties.
Five. And as in Malaysia, they form election pact to not contest with each other. But they don’t go support each other’s rally. Their election issues are very similar, and I’m not too sure what are each and other’s ideology difference… I would say minor difference…

8. PAP holds on to power ever since separation (and even before that!), similar to BN lah!
Workers party is the biggest opposition party and looks set to win highest vote share among the oppositions.

9. New media, social media plays HUGE role in election campaign in Singapore, where internet penetration rate is 80%!
But apart from The Online Citizen, there’s hardly any credible Malaysiakini or TheMalaysianInsider-ish “internet media”.

10. The wind of change is real! People want better accountability, and want to give the already complacent and arrogant ruling party a slap!
2006 PAP experienced an 8.7% vote swing against it, but only 2 opposition candidates (Chiam See Tong, five-term MP, and Low Thia Kiang, four-term MP) managed to get re-elected into the parliament via SMC. I think this time, there’ll definitely be a swing, in fact a stronger swing against the ruling party.
And I believe a successful wind of change that blows more opposition into the parliament in Singapore, will in a way help to maintain the momentum of change in Malaysia.