The Real Watershed Election to come: GE 2016

by Dinesh Senan: Published: The Business Times, Singapore: 17 May 2011

It was a big mistake on the part of many within the PAP, just a few short months ago, to have so confidently assumed that the “old head vs heart divide” issue was “largely a thing of the past”, as so many within the party had believed and had shared with me then. Thatʼs precisely why the party was so evidently caught flat-footed when faced with the exceptionally strong display of sentiments by the People, by Singaporean standards, in taking the PAP to task, whilst demonstrating unparalleled support for the Opposition, which characterised and set apart this GE from all previous ones.

However, what will be a bigger mistake by far is for any of the political parties here to believe that this was the watershed election. (“Watershed” = a “continental drainage divide” in which the waters on each side flow to different oceans … or a “major drainage divide” where the waters on each side divide, never to meet again). Taking the colloquial meaning of a dividing, or turning point, and judging by the macro-level trend of overall popular vote slippage garnered by the PAP, (75.3% in the GE of 2001, 66.6% in the GE of 2006 and 60.1% in this 2011 GE), I feel that it is clearly the next one that will be the real “watershed election” for our country.

Accordingly, in order to influence that future GEʼs more critical outcome, (ie as either a critical trend affirming or a trend reversing outcome), it will be necessary for parties, (incumbent or challenging), to accurately identify, and then sincerely and genuinely acknowledge their respective biggest challenges that lie ahead of them, before rolling up their sleeves and getting down to addressing those challenges squarely and candidly, and with greater direct and sincere engagement with the People.

And all this will need to be done within the context of the new political environment that the internet age has ushered in, most specifically in that there is now effectively no “statute of limitations” in cyberspace for anything said or done in the past, however distant in time, when it comes to influence-peddling within the realm of technology-empowered campaign tactics. In this digital age, no party can avoid anything said or done in the past simply by ignoring it. The only way to lessen the impact of the past will be by directly confronting it with the People, and addressing the issue squarely with the People. Any party that sticks its head in the sand as regards past issues will most assuredly be rudely “techno-kicked” in its behind, and will come off looking no smarter than the bird-brained ostrich.

Key challenges facing the PAP

In this landscape, and in the main, it is very much the Head v Heart challenge that still besets the PAP: the party still holds on to controlling power in Parliament largely because it currently still has a sound and large enough set of intelligent, capable heads within its ranks.

The prevailing “head-related” issues are doubtlessly complex, and will include addressing the need for policy changes impacting matters such as facilitating more affordable homes for young couples, striking a finer balance on immigration policy that also inevitably poses a competitive threat in certain, albeit limited, areas for jobs and seats at educational institutions against Singaporeans, and in ensuring that the top level growth benefits of the country are seen and felt to trickle further downwards to benefit even more Singaporeans. These arenʼt easy areas to tackle. However, the reality is that most Singaporeans have very little doubt that the PAP, with its arsenal of competent brains and experience behind it, will not fail to deliver quality solutions in all of these realms, once they set their minds to it. But thatʼs just NOT where the PAPʼs biggest challenges lie.

The partyʼs biggest challenge is in turning the tide in regaining the hearts of the People, which are fast slipping into precariously low levels of support, (a classic case of a depleting “emotional bank account”), and almost to the point of tipping the balance of votes away from the party altogether, (a watershed outcome), and this despite the partyʼs undisputed head-based strengths in policy development and governance. Head-based ʻsmartsʼ alone are simply not enough for this changed electorate.

The PAP will have to truly and humbly engage in serious-minded introspection, to identify just where these heart-based and painfully ʻdistancingʼ challenges lie, before genuinely and candidly acknowledging them in discussion with the public, and then be seen to sincerely address them.

Picking up on sentiments from an unusually, and pleasantly, robust and healthy level of political discussions across Singaporeans of all age groups over these past few months, here are a few of the more persistent heart-based challenges of the PAP which are most often brought up for discussion:

Why does the party pay its officers so much more than the average politician worldwide for public service work?

• Whether in salaries, bonuses and/or pensions, this is a matter that potentially calls into question an important aspect of the overall moral authority of the PAP as it seeks to continue to lead the People. It is no doubt a prickly issue which the party simply cannot avoid speaking more candidly about with the People of Singapore. And especially when the rising cost of living is hurting more and more Singaporeans, the relatively extraordinarily high levels of pay of the party leaders makes it less possible for the People to truly connect with the members of the party, or to believe their leaders can actually “feel” their pain.
• Any attempt at portraying purely economic based supporting rationale for the recruitment and retention of the best talent to serve in high public offices of trust just wonʼt cut it any further. That completely misses the point of what the People are trying to say to the party. That is, saying that the best leaders will only serve the country when their own pockets arenʼt too badly affected just doesnʼt wash with the higher notion of privilege and honor in wielding the mandate of trust placed in their hands by the People of Singapore today. A certain sense of ʻnobilityʼ of public service in high office is lost, however this issue is diced in purely clinical, economic terms. The counter-argument as regards loss of income during public service is that at any rate, post-retirement, many opportunities still abound for proven, senior politicians to earn good money, for instance, in serving on corporate Boards, through book publications and through international public speaking circuits etc.

The PAP doesnʼt yet sound like it fully embraces the notion of “Servant Leadership”

• For sustainable leadership in todayʼs world, voters demand that the tone and the language of the PAP must demonstrate transcendence from mere “Leadership” and into the higher realm of “Servant Leadership”. It is a tone of voice that needs to be watched. Humility needs to be truly and completely embraced at all levels within the party. The more educated and financially better off Singaporean populace of today, (so starkly different from the general population some 50 years ago, which was probably “grateful” that there were educated people in the party to do some of the complex thinking for and on behalf of the population then), will no longer tolerate any form of being “talked down to”. The party should check itself to see just where some of the former tones of voice are consciously or otherwise still carrying through in todayʼs communications with a significantly changed electoral profile.
• Today, no matter how smart a political aspirant may be, he still needs to be seen and believed to be humble, and to seek to persuade and win over the support of the citizens. The People expect to be talked to with respect, regardless of how intelligent the politician may be.
• The People will, in the end, always reclaim their status as Master of the house, with elected politicians performing as Privileged Servants. Any politician who starts to behave as if the People are lucky or privileged to have him or her serve them will be summarily disabused of such a skewed sense of self importance in this much-changed landscape.

The haunting legacy of previous harsh treatment of opposing voices

• Fear, intended or otherwise, (engendered through the earlier but not digitally forgotten era of incarceration of political dissidents without trial, law suits leading to the bankrupting of opposition members, etc, however justified), was arguably a very useful pragmatic, tactical weapon in speeding up the process of national development in Singapore in the past, (yes, too many cooks can pragmatically slow things down).
• But in todayʼs demonstrably changed and improved living climate, (where thereʼs no longer the presence of rampant communist insurgent threats and gangland triads running rife, which environment might well have lent some “legitimacy” to the partyʼs strong tactics of the past), such fear-inducing tactics, or derivatives thereof, will simply never work with the changed electorate of today. Threats, however veiled, will not wash with this electorate. Politicians will be reminded very harshly, if ever they forget, that they are in power only because they asked for the privilege, and the People gave it to them momentarily, and graciously, in trust …
• And hereʼs the real challenge: even if todayʼs PAP is saying that it is or wishes to be different from the PAP of the past, the party will never distance itself from the past simply by ignoring it. The party will somehow have to find the inner strength to address this matter candidly, and discuss this directly with the People of Singapore, if it wishes to have a chance of putting to bed these haunting things of
• the past, in a bid to reduce the impact of their being used against it perennially by both the opposition and members of the electorate.

Need for better face to face connection, at all levels of society

• The party, which is filled with extraordinarily capable, diligent and well-meaning leaders of integrity whose genuine care for Singaporeʼs growth and development isnʼt in question, will need to find more meaningful ways and means to ramp up its face-to-face communications particularly with the better educated and the better- off elements of society in Singapore, in order for any heart-based changes to be effectively felt by the People.
• The PAP has a very strong and well-deserved loyal following at the grassroots level of society, truly well-earned through its genuine, tireless service over the past 5 decades, primarily at those ʻheartlanderʼ levels, via its ʻMeet-the-Peopleʼ sessions. This is a strength insufficiently leveraged by the party, as the growing upper strata of society miss out, comparatively, on such opportunities for direct, face-to-face engagements with the real people who make up the PAP. This ability to connect on a face-to-face level is something the party needs to think about expanding, to reach the upper and better educated levels of society, and to address.

Key challenges facing the Opposition

The People will also be watching the Opposition very closely, between now and the next GE, mainly from the perspective of how well they fare in substantive terms in the realm of real, specific policy influence and promulgation. It will not be enough for Opposition members who have been granted a few of our precious seats in Parliament now by the People, (and at tremendous real opportunity cost to Singapore, given the calibre of some of the outgoing political talent that has consequentially been set aside in the process, not least of whom is the ultra-capable colossus of Singapore politics, Minister George Yeo), to merely spot issues and highlight them. The Opposition members of parliament will need to move into and participate actively in the tangible solution development arena as well. That is, they cannot behave simply like armchair critics, when occupying parliamentary seats. 90% of the journey towards solution identification, it is said, is already traveled if you can, with accuracy, describe a problem. But if the Opposition doesnʼt then move further into solution design proposals, the electorate will hold them to account very strictly. It will be no excuse for the Opposition to say that the incumbent party has better access to data etc and so they should be better positioned to come up with political solutions. The bottom line is this: if you ask the People of Singapore for a number of our precious 87 seats we have in parliament, then, when the People give it to you, youʼd better be prepared to work harder to be much more than just an armchair critic. If all you wanted to be was just such a critic, then donʼt ask for a seat in that sacred House, but criticize away freely from the sidelines. These seats are meant for hardworking solution developers. And thatʼs what the People will be looking for in their Opposition voices in parliament.

The Next 5 Years & the Key challenges for Singaporeans as a whole

One thing is for sure: Between now and the next GE, the People will be watching very closely for tangible evidence of the following: (a) a genuine change in heart-based matters including those listed above, by the PAP and (b) sincere, tangible effort at new policy influence and/or promulgation by the Opposition whilst in parliament.

Having said that, there is also a corresponding duty on the part of lay Singaporean citizens, too, to work harder ourselves, if we truly want a more robust, accountable and high-performing parliament for our Nation. Beyond the public sector, (government), and the private sector, (business), we in Singapore need to develop and organise our largely under-developed social sector, (the “Third Sector”, per Peter Drucker), and take more responsibility ourselves for shaping the future we desire for ourselves and our families.

We ourselves need to be clearer and more vocal in expressing our evolving standards of expectations of the overall calibre of servant leadership we desire for our Nation.

We need to pay closer attention to the performance of our chosen parliamentary representatives, consistently, and not just at election time.

And if we are unclear in our expectations, or passive in our vigilance of their performance, then we will end up with the parliament we justly deserve.