Why Singapore’s PAP is taking aim at opposition WP so soon after an election

It has been six months since the national polls concluded in Singapore, but the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) is not resting on its laurels. A popular line among party faithfuls is that the PAP begins preparing for the next election the day after winning one. But a recent series of salvoes against its main opponent, the Workers’ Party (WP) and leader Pritam Singh suggests a new intensity, if not strategy. Observers point to a calculated PAP approach outside election season as its recognition that future polls in the city state will become more hotly contested and may hinge on swing voters or its supporters who may be leaning towards the middle ground. In the May general election, the PAP extended its dominance that predates Singapore’s independence, winning 87 of the 97 seats on offer while improving its overall vote share to 65.57 per cent from 61.23 per cent. While most other opposition parties had their vote share nosedive, the WP retained its 10 elected seats and repeated its 2020 feat of winning more votes than the PAP in the constituencies it contested. In total, across the eight constituencies it ran in, the WP won more than half the votes. But it failed to make headway in the closely watched Tampines and Punggol group representation constituencies and the Jalan Kayu single-seat race, despite a slate of strong candidates, which included former MP Faisal Manap, senior counsel Harpreet Singh and ex-diplomat Eileen Chong. In the months that followed, the PAP machinery has steamed on, with cabinet ministers including Prime Minister Lawrence Wong taking aim at the WP for the way it handled an engagement with an unconventional Islamic preacher in the hustings, scrutinising Pritam Singh’s decision to go on a Malaysian podcast in June, and his most recent comments about the court of public opinion being the largest one. “It’s good for the PAP to play this game; to play the fear factor, because it gives them the comfort that the more Singaporeans fear the opposition coming in, the stronger PAP gets,” said political scientist Bilveer Singh, noting that the ruling party’s continuous politicking despite a stronger mandate was aligned with its long-standing strategy. “There are about 10 to 20 per cent of Singaporeans who are swing voters, and PAP will be targeting them 24/7 – they won’t wait for elections to come around to do it,” Singh said. With a new man at the helm and the knowledge that the party would unlikely return to the days of complete dominance, it was unsurprising that the PAP was in battle mode early, he added. Identity crisis? At the PAP convention on November 9, Prime Minister Wong said of the recent polls: “The media described the election result as a ‘landslide’ victory for the PAP. But to me, it was not a landslide. We had very tough fights in several constituencies.” Wong listed the contest in Tampines as an example and called out the WP’s “calculated appeal to Malay-Muslim voters” that would have harmed Singapore’s social cohesion and led to a divided country. During the campaign period, religious teacher Noor Deros and Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) members had endorsed Faisal as he was seen to be more supportive of the Malay-Muslim community than his opponent, then minister in charge of Muslim Affairs Masagos Zulkifli. The latter, who is also minister for social and family development, led the PAP team in Tampines to win narrowly in a four-corner fight but later relinquished his Muslim portfolio. In recent months, Ministers K Shanmugam and Indranee Rajah have called out WP leaders for meeting Noor during the election. In a ministerial statement on race and religion in parliament last month, Shanmugam, the coordinating minister for national security, took issue with how the WP did not quickly and clearly reject Noor’s support for Faisal, and how the preacher urged followers to vote along religious lines. Earlier this month, Leader of the House Indranee sought clarification from Singh, who said that Noor had “gatecrashed” a meeting with WP candidates. She argued that she had found out Noor was invited to the meeting by an Islamic teacher delegated by Faisal. Some political observers say it is a given for the ruling party to severely condemn identity politics, while others note that the PAP may be using it as yet another opportunity to keep the opposition strongly in check. Mustafa Izzuddin, senior international affairs analyst with Solaris Strategies Singapore, told This Week in Asia that the PAP likely felt that the incident was serious enough to disrupt social harmony in the country. “While identity politics is not new, the timeliness of the incident, which occurred during election season, against the backdrop of rising antisemitism and Islamophobia [in other countries], could have spurred the government to “come down on it quite vigorously”, Izzuddin said. Bilveer Singh said the incident likely touched a “raw nerve” within the PAP. “PAP’s claim to legitimacy comes from identity- and nation-building, so when somebody talks about race and religion, they won’t stomach it.” The party had extra motivation to set out firm markers and be extra muscular in its response as it was Wong’s first term as prime minister and he had yet to establish himself, he added. Meanwhile, Nanyang Technological University’s political scientist Walid Jumblatt Abdullah referred to Wong’s comment that the WP’s decision to field Faisal in Tampines was a “calculated appeal”. Walid argued, however, that appealing to voters in a calculated manner should be a given in election campaigning. “[Parties] should be doing their best to get the votes of the minority [and majority] communities. That includes fielding the best minority candidates, surely,” Walid wrote on social media. “Minorities are just voters like everyone else, who want their aspirations articulated by their elected representatives.” Alan Chong, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore, said the PAP’s constant criticism was “a little unfair”, noting that identity politics was entrenched and omnipresent. “These matters are all over social media, uncensored all the time, not just over the Gaza war, but also long before that concerning the events of 9/11 and Islamic radicalism,” he argued. While it was right for the PAP to warn other parties against using racial and religious lines, it should be done consistently, he added. Meanwhile, Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said the PAP was taking a calculated approach by “painting the WP as being particularly divisive”. “They are setting their agenda, and like they have during previous terms, are trying to put their opponents on the back foot.” Blitz to continue In WP chief Pritam Singh’s first televised interview in Singapore last month, he was asked how he felt about being called a liar due to a court case sparked by former WP MP Raeesah Khan’s false anecdote in Parliament in August 2021. Singh was fined S$14,000 (US$10,770) in court for lying to a parliamentary committee about how he instructed Khan, a rookie MP, to handle the lie. His appeal against the court’s decision is pending. Singh said on the programme he did not lose sleep over the case and added: “My political opponents will do whatever it takes to lower my esteem and the esteem of my party in the public eye.” He also said that the court of public opinion could be a bigger court than any court in the world. Minister of Law Edwin Tong last Saturday slammed Singh’s comment on the courts, calling it “an outrageous statement, plainly wrong and also completely unacceptable”. Tong added that Singh’s response was similar to that seen all over the world from “populist politicians who attack judges and courts when rulings go against them”. “They think they are above the law, but this kind of irresponsible politics should have no place in Singapore,” Tong warned. Singh on Sunday clarified that his comments were not directed at the judicial system, judges or their independence, and did not denigrate any of the institutions, but were made in the context of WP’s “respectable performance” in the general election, despite the possible negative impact of the guilty verdict against him over the Raeesah Khan incident just two months before the polls. They’ve been focusing their attention on Pritam Singh for a while Chong Ja Ian, National University of Singapore academic Chong from NUS said of the ruling party: “They are trying to be very difficult to the WP.” He added that the PAP seemed to be targeting Pritam Singh as part of a political strategy. “They’ve been focusing their attention on Pritam Singh for a while, possibly because he’s the most likely, in their eyes, as the Leader of the Opposition, to be a threat.” Singh was also criticised by the ruling party in July for his appearance on Keluar Sekejap, a popular political podcast hosted by former Malaysian health minister Khairy Jamaluddin and former Umno chief Shahril Hamdan. PAP in a statement questioned Singh’s choice to “speak about Singapore’s politics on foreign soil to a foreign audience” and asked if he believed foreign interference was acceptable when beneficial to the WP. In response, the WP pointed out that the ruling party routinely gave interviews and shared views on Singapore’s matters to foreign media outlets. PAP then rebutted that its leaders spoke on a range of domestic and international issues, while Singh’s interview on Keluar Sekejap “focused almost entirely on internal Singapore’s politics”. The post-election barbs fired could signal that the PAP had recognised that Singapore was becoming more democratised, Chong of RSIS said. “It can be taken that PM Wong is indirectly acknowledging that every election is going to be hard-fought, and every vote has to be fought for. “It’s happening everywhere in the world: People no longer think established parties are going to rule forever.”

Why Singapore’s PAP is taking aim at opposition WP so soon after an election

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The PAP’s war of words against the WP is a calculated approach for it to get a head start before the next election, analysts say

The PAP’s war of words against the WP is a calculated approach for it to get a head start before the next election, analysts say