So this weekend happened in lah-lah-land, one where the winds of political change blew through with semi-wild expectations, but left quickly on Sunday midnight with a foul whiff of conventional tastes, when it coalesced from hopeful whimsy to the a firm, dull block of mediocre expectations of the seemingly change-averse majority.
I spoke with friends in the couple of weeks leading up this election. My friends are mostly polytechnic or university educated with middle-to-high income jobs. One or two are not working, either by choice or were retrenched. Some were very keen on the rally goings-on and others were quietly feeding off the barrage of information, links and other content coming through Whatsapp, TikTok, Instagram and other social media sources.
Almost all of them felt that change was coming, in a good way. Seriously. Almost no one believed the fearmongering over the loss of Ministers, doubt over the best party to lead the country through a global economic crisis and that change was dangerous. No one expected anything less than a few more seats taken by the opposition.
When I met some friends on election day itself, they ranted over the way they lost jobs to lower wage foreigners, how the civil service was rife with politics and grandstanding, and how arrogant some political higher ups seems to have become. They felt these sentiments echoed through their network of family, friends and neighbours. No one thought these feelings would not find reflection in electoral results.
When the sample counts started coming in on Saturday night, our prognoses were proved wrong.
What happened is also a matter of gazillion opinions, now that the proverbial dust has settled. Here’s my two-long winded-cents worth:
1. The WP did fabulously. Folks who attended their rallies and watched the hustings online felt the genuine conviction they had in serving the people. The opposition party in fact grew their Yes count in Hougang SMC by 1 % and in Sengkang GRC by 4%. Here’s the even bigger kicker - if one averaged out the PAP win percentage across the constituencies where the WP ran as well, the PAP average comes to 49.4% versus a WP average of 50.5%. There is a true, palpable swing towards alternative voices in the east.
2. It’s incredible that unknown Andre Low almost knocked out much-in-the-news Ng Chee Meng for the Jalan Kayu seat. It’s also unfortunate the leaked Whatsapp message with his less-than-parliamentary rant against a member of public came out to perhaps hurt his image, against someone who, from conjecture is a really disliked individual. One friend told me her relative hates him because removed the discount for kopi-o at fairprice kopitiams, haha. The larger dark cloud was his involvement in the botched Income Insurance Allianz buyout.
New news has come to light too, after the election - Photo with Su Haijin and Poor form at MOE meeting with teachers. What Lawrence Wong wishes to do with these juicy tidbits will be a test for the whiter-than-white sheen of the victors.
Given his track record, I might go see my MP and tell him I don't like him. Just for my MP for take note of a citizen's opinion. Hopefully more citizens come forth the same way and eventually some degree of redress takes shape beyond public apologies. Because whiter than white.
3. I have no idea why Paul Tambyah of the SDP saw a massive drop in support. Perhaps it was as a simple as the PAP candidate working the ground well and hard these past 5 years.
4. “The smartest man in politics” Chee Soon Juan also almost pulled a rabbit out of the political hat - 46.8% in a tiny square of land in Sembawang. Quite a jarring result for the PAP given that the rest of the GRC supported the incumbents by almost 68%. Do all the dissenters up north live in that tiny enclave of 80 or so HDB blocks on 1 square kilometre of land?
5. Gigene Wong delivered her Hokkien speech to voters with two incredibly, unreal errors in judgement. Some believe as I do that she cost the SDP a good chunk of votes. Here’s why. The Malay and Indian populations where SDP was canvassing are higher than the national average. See table below.
When she called her colleague ‘elephant’ versus ‘Ariffin’ and described with a racial slur, it hit home and heart with non-Chinese everywhere. It’s a common enough refrain from Malays and Indians who know of Chinese persons in school, the army, and at work who can’t be bothered to properly remember and pronounce their names, to point where truncations and nicknames are adopted. This even made news in Malaysia. Her apologies were naturally insufficient to undo the harm to the line-up’s credibility, despite how eloquent and clever Arrifin presented himself. The SDP should abide by the slogan Competent, Constructive, Compassionate and seek her withdrawal from the organization for the better.
6. It perhaps turn out that the date of the election was a small strategic coup for the PAP. The 3rd of May was separated by one day from the May Day holiday, a long weekend for the proper planners of their own annual leave from work. Hence, some Singaporeans were out of the country and did not vote. Let’s take this one step further. Who can afford to take a holiday in May? I postulate someone a tad more affluent, someone perhaps from my gang of friends who have slight tendency for change in the status quo? One friend who was in KL over the weekend communicated disappointment over the choice Punggolians made to a Whatsapp chat group.
7. Voting is compulsory in Singapore, one of the few democracies in the world that has this rule for its citizens (A good idea overall I feel. One should be required to ensure democracy prevails versus allowing others to make life-changing decisions for you. Well at least a semblance of control.) After each election the Elections Department issues a media statement on the number of voters who cast their ballots. In 2020, this statistic was 95.63% of eligible voters and in 2025, this number declined to 92.47%. It was the lowest turnout since 1968!
What could it mean? Related to point 6, perhaps it was a bit of coup for the ruling party to have so many people away, given that 3 of the WP contested constituencies had absenteeism percentages above 8%. See table below.
Are some voters also fed up with politics in general, unimpressed with the quality of opposition candidates so they decided that their vote wouldn't matter? Or are they just apathetic to the point of 'it doesn't matter, the PAP wins anyway', a refrain we've all heard time and time again? Or perhaps like some persons, just uninterested in politics in general. The optimist in me likes to imagine that the absent votes would have been cast for the WP in the wards where they lost by a close call. It will be interesting for the Elections Department to provide some demographic data for this set of voters. Are they young or old? What's their economic situation?
This situation also begs a question about minimum numbers to make an election viable. A quorum so to speak. If it is compulsory for citizens to vote here, then should there be a minimum number of votes required? 90% to ensure opinions measured are kosher? What if one day only 60% of voters show up?
8. Often commentators observe the turnout at election rallies to perhaps surmise outcomes. Some things I've noticed about election rallies in Singapore are:
- is that they filled with supporters, a given.
- they are also attended by curious onlookers who just to be seen to have done something interesting or heard for 30 minutes what candidates have said.
- some persons are there because they like to hear people complaining in a public forum. Our democracy is unique in one way because protests are not encouraged or condoned. We have a rarely-occupied Speakers' Corner and the PAP laughed off the SDP's suggestion of having public town halls (as is done in some western countries) to gauge sentiment and hear problems. (Why doesn't the SDP do this at Speakers' Corner anyway to keep their momentum going? I'm sure they will have a healthy supply of people with issues to crow about.) So rallies become a form of entertainment for Singaporeans because it's a rare free show.
Hence it's hard to judge how results will form from such events themselves. I went to see WP twice, at Anchorvale and at ASRJC, and SDP once in Sembawang.
9. It's Singapore's 60th birthday this year and perhaps two generations of citizens have lived through these formative years of nation building. What's curious to me is how the fearmongering still worked. Perhaps Trump's madness was enough to stoke the fears of job losses and economic turmoil across the Pacific, so that the incumbents could use it to their advantage from a "been there done that" angle to "save" Singaporeans from blunt force trauma of recession and hardship. It worked, alongside the message around the loss of ministers would be akin to disaster, that CDC vouchers are enough to cushion a badly-timed GST increase, and all else is noise. Most of us are not ready to take a leap of faith, close but not yet.
10. I like how the WP said they don't wish to take over the government but provide enough opposition, one-third representation, to not allow the PAP carte blanche when pushing policies across. I feel this a fair target, something all Singaporeans should support.
That's about it for now. This feeling of coming-in-a-close-second will fade away with time as life goes on. But for now, let me end with a long, wail of a sigh.
