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Jean Iau

Few political parties in the world know dominance the way Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP) does, as it looks set to become the longest-running administration in modern history.
Following a resounding victory in May’s general election, the city state will on Friday open its 15th parliament that will largely resemble previous party alignments.
The ruling party will continue to occupy a supermajority of seats, now at 87 of the 97 elected seats while its main rival, the Workers’ Party (WP), has the remaining 10 and two non-constituency MP seats. These non-constituency positions were first created in 1984 to ensure a minimum opposition presence in parliament.
The PAP has ruled Singapore for 66 years, since the island achieved self-governance from the British in 1959, and the party is set to beat handily the current record of being the longest-running political party in government as it serves out the new parliamentary term of five years.
Last November, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong acknowledged that very few political parties had been in power for as long as his, as he referred to the longest-running administration in the world thus far, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, which led the country for 71 years from 1929 to 2000.
“What about the PAP? We are not far behind. We are 65 years … Of course, we want to keep serving Singaporeans for as long as possible. But we must never assume that we will not see a change in government in our lifetimes,” said Wong as the party celebrated its 70th anniversary.
This Week in Asia has contacted the PAP for comment.

But with the victory in May that ceded nothing to the opposition, observers told This Week in Asia new theories were also crystallising about the PAP’s longevity.
First, the PAP may well have hit on a lasting formula for governing. Second, this agility helps to suppress the pragmatic Singaporean voters’ appetite for the opposition, to the extent that they view its expansion as one that must take place slowly and even then, the fabled one-third threshold to be able to block major bills is a leap too far.
In essence, Singaporeans want the PAP to remain in power for the foreseeable future, though kept accountable by a permanent parliamentary opposition.
Former PAP MP Inderjit Singh summed up the winning formula this way: “The PAP government has delivered most of the promises made over and over again, so people trust the PAP.”
Teo Kay Key, a research fellow at IPS Social Lab at the Institute of Policy Studies, noted that this had enabled the party to enjoy a high level of trust among citizens, hence creating a “virtuous cycle” of effective policy implementation and re-election.
Singh also noted that beyond policy implementation, the party was zealously focused on grass-roots work, with its MPs earning a lot of goodwill for “spending time with residents and handling issues on the ground”. In short, their boots-on-the-ground and highly organised networks enabled them to be ever-present in residents’ daily lives in compact, densely built Singapore making political affinities easier to build and harder for the opposition to pull apart with its own alternative options.
“Delivering the goods of political stability, economic growth, social-cultural harmony and basic personal security while gaining an international brand for itself. These are no mean achievements for a resourceless and largely vulnerable state, and where today it is one of the [world’s] richest per capita,” said Bilveer Singh, a political science professor from the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Aside from its open policies that have allowed Singapore to enjoy its renowned third-world-to-first transformation, Zulkifli Baharudin, a political observer and former nominated member of parliament, said the party managed to build a strong bureaucratic administration and civil service that helped with policymaking and implementation.

In a similar vein, the PAP government’s close ties with unions and workers have also contributed to its longevity, according to Zulkifli. “In some countries, you find workers and unions on the different sides of the government. Tripartitism is a big asset to the PAP, it means it will continue to govern for a very long time.”
He added: “I don’t think the PAP’s road to becoming the longest-serving government is at risk, simply because I think for a long time to come, the PAP will have a pulse on the ground. They will remain everything and anything to all Singaporeans.”
Teo highlighted that different generations of Singaporeans looked for different qualities in the government, with efficiency being prioritised in policy and governance in the city state’s earlier years, and there was now a shift to more citizen participation in policymaking.
“This transition is perhaps something where the take-up by the PAP has not kept pace with shifting demands. But we do see more and more efforts in this direction, and this year’s election results have shown that Singaporeans have responded positively to these changes,” Teo said.
Since a watershed 1984 election – the first one since 1968 in which the PAP did not sweep all seats and instead saw a 12 percentage point swing – the party has been on an unrelenting quest to quell the electorate’s appetite for opposition through a series of political innovations. This included the setting up of the non-constituency scheme and later the nominated MP position, where unelected representatives from various sectors give voice to a more diverse set of concerns in parliament.
Challenges ahead
The 15th parliament opens as trade-reliant Singapore reckons with an increasingly turbulent world. Wong noted in his National Day Rally earlier this month that for decades, Singapore benefited from an American-led rules-based global order and rode the waves of globalisation, but today, the US had pulled back, thereby weakening the multilateral system.
Washington has implemented the baseline 10 per cent tariffs for Singapore goods, despite a 21-year-old free-trade agreement and the US running a trade surplus with the city state.

Domestically, analysts point out that Singapore is grappling with a rapidly ageing population and lease decay in public housing flats, which house 80 per cent of the population.
Bilveer Singh said importing talent from outside was one way of tackling the ageing population but added: “While it is a useful stopgap measure, its long-term consequences are frightening as to how the demography can impact upon our politics, economy and social fabric here.”
Former nominated MP Anthea Ong noted that these local issues were not abstract but deeply personal. “The challenge is that we often tackle them with the same technocratic approaches of the past. To avoid them becoming combustible, solutions need to be framed with compassion, creativity and genuine consultation, not just policy tweaks.”
Such shifts also require new ideas and fresh political insights.
Following the recent election, the PAP inducted two newcomers to become acting full ministers – former chief of army David Neo and senior civil servant Jeffrey Siow, but Ong stressed the importance of broadening perspectives even for leadership renewal.
“When leadership renewal draws from familiar circles, the risk is less diversity of thought. That produces competence, but may not nurture the creativity needed for today’s complex challenges. We cannot solve these with the same modes of thinking that may have contributed to them in the first place, such as in the case of the national mental health strain,” Ong said.
While policy reforms and infusion of talent would be challenges going forward, for Bilveer Singh, the main test for the party would be internal fissures. He said this was especially the case given how there was currently no overpowering single, charismatic figure since the death of founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew in 2015.
“In political history, one-party dominant states such as Singapore only collapse not because of opposition strength but more due to factionalism and fissures from within leading to a split in the ruling party – this is what needs to be watched,” Bilveer Singh said.
He argued that Wong’s collective leadership style and the presence of the old guard with figures such as Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam would keep the party united. However, the third-generation leaders must eventually give way to the fourth and fifth waves.
Furthermore, the PAP is seen to be held to a higher standard than the opposition, so any mishaps must be managed and dealt with prudently. “In short, no more Iswarans,” Bilveer Singh said, referring to the former transport minister who was jailed recently for accepting gifts as a public servant.

What else can the opposition do?
In the lead-up to the May election, pundits had expected the opposition to make further inroads into parliament owing to what they sensed was a greater desire for more diverse views in parliament. But the opposition failed to make any headway.
The WP retained its strongholds in Aljunied and Hougang, as well as Sengkang, which it won in 2020. The party also came close in the group constituency in Tampines and Jalan Kayu, where newcomer Andre Low narrowly lost to former cabinet minister Ng Chee Meng by about 800 votes.
Low and Eileen Chong, a former diplomat who was part of the Tampines team, will fill the two non-constituency MP seats awarded to the best losers of the election.
WP MP Louis Chua told This Week in Asia that the party would remain focused on its core mission – to be a “loyal opposition that works in the interest of the country, bringing credible and alternative views and ideas that represent all Singaporeans”.
“While we may be an opposition party with a small presence in parliament, we have always sought to proactively speak up for all Singaporeans and make an outsize impact. We seek to not only challenge but present alternative ideas and bring constructive feedback as well as debate to parliament,” Chua said.
He argued that given how Singapore would face a volatile and troubled world, it was even more critical for the WP to represent different views and ideas in parliament and advance fresh policies that could accommodate the aspirations and needs of a more sophisticated society. These include policies to address the cost of living, economic growth and opportunities, as well as inclusion and equality.
Teo, meanwhile, argued that opposition parties needed to ensure they continued to have a public profile by serving in the community and ensuring that their potential constituents had consistent touchpoints despite not being elected.
Bilveer Singh argued that ultimately the opposition would not be able to make a major dent unless it could forge a meaningful coalition.
“There are strategies, tactics and techniques the opposition needs to develop, the mother of all being the birth of a united opposition under one acceptable leader, a single manifesto and only then will the opposition be able to make an impact; otherwise they will remain a nice but toothless decoration in parliament.”
Felix Tan, an independent political observer, noted that the opposition had only won seats in the last three election cycles, with an insufficient size in parliament to bring forth significant policy change. “Opposition representation is far from a major concern for the government for the time being,” he said.
Gerrymandering and electoral reform
Earlier this month, members of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) hosted an event in the central business district calling for electoral reform. The session was also attended by Progress Singapore Party (PSP) representatives, academics and other members of the public.
Under Singapore’s electoral system, the lines are drawn up by the electoral boundaries review committee, which includes senior civil servants. The committee reports to the prime minister before a poll.

Among other things, the SDP called for the election department not to come under the Prime Minister’s Office, the abolition of group constituencies, a longer runway time between boundary changes and the election, and a minimum of three weeks of campaign period, up from the current nine days.
When the issue of electoral boundaries was brought up by the PSP in parliament last August, minister Chan Chun Sing, who spoke on behalf of the prime minister, said the committee’s work was data-driven and it did not have access to voting information, nor did it consult the PAP.
“The process is meant to serve the interests of Singaporeans, and not the interests of political parties,” Chan, now defence minister, said.
Speaking at the SDP event on August 23, party chief Chee Soon Juan said he would be careful to draw the conclusion from the election results that most Singaporeans felt comfortable with the electoral system in Singapore.
“The political ecosystem as a whole [is] engineered to produce one outcome and one outcome only, which is to allow the PAP to rule in perpetuity, as long as the elections department works from within the prime minister’s office, and the PAP continues to wield its anti-democratic power, no amount of campaigning done by the opposition will result in any meaningful and democratic change,” Chee argued.
Bilveer Singh said perceptions on gerrymandering persisted, giving the impression that incumbency brought these added advantages. However, he noted that this route to entrenching power would reach its limits if, ultimately, the basic political and economic goods were not delivered.
Ong, meanwhile, pointed out that what had kept the PAP in power was a proven track record of delivery, well-planned leadership renewal at regular intervals and a capacity to adapt when pressed.
What is next for the PAP? Ong said: “The real test for longevity now is whether it can also transform its style – moving from control and efficiency to creativity and inclusion. Singaporeans don’t just want to be well-governed; we want to be heard and trusted.”


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Will Singapore’s PAP rule forever?

Supporters of the ruling People’s Action Party gather at a nomination centre in Singapore on April 23 ahead of the May 3 general election. The PAP has ruled Singapore for 66 years. Photo: EPA-EFE

Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong from the ruling People’s Action Party at an assembly area on May 3. Wong spoke about the PAP’s longevity in power at its 70th anniversary last year. Photo: AP

Singapore’s opposition Workers’ Party members led by Secretary General Pritam Singh at a stadium as they wait for the results of the May 3 general election. Photo: AFP

Elderly people in Singapore’s Chinatown. Singapore faces many changes ranging from the turbulent global trade environment to a rapidly ageing population. Photo: AFP

Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew speaking at a conference in Hong Kong in 1990. There is no overpowering, charismatic figure in the People’s Action Party since Lee’s death in 2015, an analyst says. Photo: AFP

Chief of the Singapore Democratic Party Chee Soon Juan at an election walkabout in 2020. His party has called for electoral reforms including abolishing group constituencies and extending the election campaigning period. Photo: EPA-EFE

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The Workers’ Party chief Pritam Singh says the tone of parliamentary debates in Singapore mirrors the serious and results-oriented national character. Photo: Reuters

Singapore’s parliament holds debates on “real issues”, reflecting the country’s pragmatic nature, says opposition leader Pritam Singh. Photo: Shutterstock

Singapore’s opposition leader Pritam Singh says his Workers’ Party has to “reset” its strategy in tandem with the redrawing of electoral boundaries during each election. Photo: EPA-EFE

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Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong during the National Day Rally on Sunday. Photo: YouTube/Lawrence Wong 黄循财

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The People’s Action Party may have found a lasting formula for governing, with Singaporeans wanting it to remain in power, analysts say


The People’s Action Party may have found a lasting formula for governing, with Singaporeans wanting it to remain in power, analysts say.


Will Singapore’s PAP rule forever?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The People’s Action Party may have found a lasting formula for governing, with Singaporeans wanting it to remain in power, analysts say

The People’s Action Party may have found a lasting formula for governing, with Singaporeans wanting it to remain in power, analysts say