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| Election 2011 Singapore |
Although Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's PAP should easily retain its large majority, his party will be contesting 82 of the country's 87 parliamentary seats, up from just 47 of the 84 seats in the last parliament.
Candidates representing the city-state's opposition parties are also of a higher caliber and include a top corporate lawyer and several former high-ranking civil servants.
Singapore's two long-serving opposition members are not defending their single-member seats and will lead teams to contest multi-seat group representation constituencies (GRCs) that the PAP has never lost.
At the last general election in 2006, the PAP clinched 82 of 84 elected seats with 66.6 percent of the vote. The ruling party got 75.3 percent of the vote in the previous elections in 2001 when opposition parties contested fewer than half the seats.
KEY RISKS
Should the PAP, which has ruled Singapore since independence in 1965, see a substantial dilution in the share of votes, it could lead to:
- A government that is more susceptible to populist pressure
- Singapore being less welcoming of foreign workers
- Further efforts to cool down property prices, especially in the mass market
KEY ISSUES
- Immigration. Foreigners now make up 36 percent of Singapore's population of 5.1 million, up from around 20 percent of 4 million people a decade earlier, which is becoming an irritant to many citizens.
They have complained about competition for jobs and housing, the dilution of Singapore's national identity, as well as increasingly crowded roads, buses and trains.
For the many foreigners who work in Singapore, and firms that use the city-state as their regional base, the key issue is whether the government will continue the open immigration policies that makes it easy for foreigners to work in Singapore if there is a sharp drop in support for the PAP.
- Inflation and inequality. Relatively high inflation and income inequality could also affect support for the PAP.
Despite stellar economic growth in one of Asia's wealthiest nations, many poorer Singaporeans feel they have fallen through the cracks as government policy is focused on expansion and attracting foreign investment.
GDP grew 14.5 percent last year, but government data shows the city-state's median household income rose a much smaller 3.1 percent, or 0.3 percent after adjusting for inflation, to S5,000 ($4,022) a month last year.
Singapore's bottom 10 percent of households with at least one working member had an average monthly income of S$1,400 last year, versus S$23,684 for households in the top 10 percent, according to the Department of Statistics.
Prices are also a worry. Singapore's inflation rate is currently running above 5 percent and the central bank recently said consumer price index (CPI) inflation will likely come in at the upper end of a 3-4 percent range this year.
- Housing. Many young Singaporeans feel they can no longer afford homes, unlike their parents' generation, and they feel that government's immigration policies are partly to blame.
Singapore has one of the world's highest rates of home ownership at 87 percent, thanks to a home-building programme to provide cheap housing for its citizens that began in the late 1960s. But the government's Housing and Development Board (HDB) is building fewer flats and charging more for them.
The Workers' Party, the strongest of Singapore's small opposition parties, said in its manifesto it would price new government-built HDB apartments at a level such that buyers will take 20 years to pay off their mortgage instead of 30.
BACKGROUND
- The spread of new media tools such as Facebook and YouTube has allowed opposition parties to bypass the state-controlled media to recruit members and reach out directly to the electorate.
- Top government officials such as former army chief Major-General Chan Chun Sing and former central bank chief Heng Swee Keat have joined the PAP for the election.
- Newcomers in the opposition ranks include top corporate lawyer Chen Show Mao, who studied at Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, and Kenneth Jeyaretnam, a hedge fund manager with double first-class honours from Cambridge. Chen last year advised Agricultural Bank of China on its $22 billion initial public offering -- then the world's largest.
WHAT'S AT STAKE?
- Singapore has been divided into 15 group representation constituencies (GRCs) of four to six seats each, and 12 single member constituencies (SMCs), for a total of 87 Parliamentary seats.
- The party winning the most votes in a multi-member constituency takes all its seats. The PAP has never lost a GRC since the system was introduced in the 1988 election.
- If parties opposed to the ruling PAP win fewer than 9 seats, losing candidates with the largest percentage of votes will be appointed non-constituency MPs (NCMPs), who can speak in parliament but cannot vote on finance or constitutional bills.
- Political parties can start campaigning with immediate effect now that nominations are over. There is a one-day "cooling off" period on May 6 when campaigning is not allowed, and full results of the May 7 election will be available early on May 8.
