EP85: Singapore Goes to Polls with Dr. Elvin Ong
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Welcome to Straight Talk Southeast Asia. This is a podcast that covers current developments in the region, particular countries, domestic politics, as well as regional issues. We look in depth at what is happening, why it might be happening. We speak to analysts, academics from the region, based in the region, and to better understand what's happening and what might be the projections of what's happening ahead. We're now in our second season.

I'm Bridget Welsh. I'm a political analyst and academic who's worked on Southeast Asia for many decades. I was raised here. I'm living here. And very importantly, I care about what's happening in the region. Thanks for joining me. Welcome to Straight Talk Southeast Asia. You're with Bridget Welsh and Zach Abouza. This is Episode 17.

This week, we're going to have two episodes. This focuses on Singapore. Later in the week, marking the anniversary of the Vietnam-U.S. war, we're going to have an episode on this topic. There's so much going on in Southeast Asia that we felt it was appropriate to have greater attention to some very important events that are happening politically.

Before we begin the episode and the conversations about Singapore polls, which are scheduled on May 3rd, and to hear from my co-host, Zach Abouza, about his observations of developments in the region, I want to draw your attention to a new Human Rights Watch report on dissent in Vietnam.

This is an important report because now more than ever, as the United States abdicates its values associated with democratic promotion and looking at questions of rights, we see the importance of governmental organizations of bringing attention to these sets of issues. In this report on Vietnam, Human Rights Watch talks about how the Vietnam government has intensely began a crackdown against dissent.

We always know that Vietnam has a crackdown element, but it has become much more intensive. Between 2018 and February of this year, we've seen 124 people being convicted under a provision called Article 331, which gives part of the penal code that criminalizes the abuse of democratic freedoms and has become a powerful tool to stifle dissent.

This number of people that have been arrested is almost four times those who have been convicted in the last six years. And we see journalists, human rights activists, grieving family members, ethnic minorities and others part of that.

This shows that the regime in Vietnam has shifted. It's going through major changes, some of those that Zach is going to talk about in a moment. It is also changing its relationship in the level of acceptance of criticism and dissent in the society itself. Thanks, as always, for joining us here on Straight Talk. I hope you've enjoyed the conversations that we have this week. I look forward to engaging with you in the next episode.

Myanmar's junta has retaken the northern Shan state trading hub Lashio following a Chinese-brokered agreement that saw opposition forces withdraw from the city. The Myanmar National Defense Alliance Army, or MNDAA, which is a member of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, had taken the city in the second phase of Operation 1027 in August 2024.

It was the largest urban center taken by the Three Brotherhood Alliance since they began their offensive in late October 2023. The MNDA had bowed to Chinese pressure after Beijing took the group's leader hostage and cut off border trade and electricity and internet to their administrative hubs.

Chinese Special Envoy Deng Lishun entered the city along with junta troops with a convoy of Chinese security forces, angering Myanmar's public. The Chinese neither like the junta nor trust Min Aung Hlaing, whom they see as incompetent. But they are looking for a political off-ramp for the generals, and they believe that the military should have representation in a future post-junta government.

The Chinese cannot imagine what a federal democracy on their borders would look like, and at worst they fear a long-running civil war and chronic instability on their borders. So Chinese assistance should be seen as laying the groundwork for "elections" that the junta has promised at the end of the year

While the junta only controls around 45% of the territory, they control nearly two-thirds of the population, which explains why Lazio is more than just a symbolic gain. Lazio does potentially provide them with a base to launch a counteroffensive against the Tang National Liberation Army and the MNDAA. But to be fair, every one of their counteroffensives has sputtered.

The junta has retaken almost no territory since Operation 1027 began. The MNDA surrender of Lajio also reflects the fact that while the ethnic-resistant armies have agency and will often defy China, they are careful not to cross Beijing's red lines. The junta has maintained their war efforts despite pledging a humanitarian ceasefire after the devastating earthquake rocked the country in

Since the earthquake, the junta has launched over 300 air attacks mainly against civilian targets. Despite the international community's presence on the ground, their callous disregard of human life and the military's absence from any disaster relief really speaks volumes about their intentions.

It also speaks to their strained manpower. Despite the imposition of conscription over a year ago, they simply cannot afford to withdraw their troops from the front lines. While the TNLA and the MNDA seem to be digging in defensive positions in northern Shan State, there are a number of other offensive operations against the junta throughout the country.

The Kachin Independence Army looks like they have completed their capture of Bamu, an important treating and transit hub. The Arakan Army is working with PDFs, driving into Magwe, Bago, and Ayawadi, the Bama heartland.

The Karen National Union has stepped up attacks in their territory along the Thai border, and there are significantly more attacks by local PDFs in Tanantirya in the country's deep south. Many of these are new battlefronts for the junta, which is forced to redeploy its already thin forces and will strain their already weak and vulnerable supply lines. The government reorganization in Vietnam continues at blistering speed,

The government has already pushed through the reorganization of the national government, folding in five ministries and three national-level agencies. Over 100,000 civil servants were made redundant. The government has announced a major overhaul of the provinces.

After the merger, Vietnam would have a total of 28 provinces and six centrally governed cities, 46% decrease from the 63 it has now. It will also completely eliminate the district level as an administrative unit between the provincial governments and local communes or urban wards. The ostensible reason for these reforms is to reduce bureaucracy and streamline administration.

There is a clear economic reason for this as well. With the exception of 11 provinces in the country's northwest, every other province now has a coastline, making it easier for all provinces to be able to export their goods. But there are clear political ramifications to the reduction in the number of provinces. First, it reduces the amount of bargaining between the central government and the provinces.

Second, with a 46% reduction in provinces, the party general secretary, Tolam, is going to have to choose which provincial party chiefs keep their jobs. That will give him inordinate personal sway heading into the next party congress.

Third, traditionally one-third of the Communist Party's Central Committee is comprised of provincial representatives. The dramatically reduced number of provinces suggests that the Central Committee elected at the 14th Party Congress in January 2026 is likely to be significantly smaller than the 200-member Central Committee elected at the 13th Congress in January 2021.

Fourth, by eliminating nearly half of the provinces and all of the district-level units, the Communist Party is significantly reducing the pathways for advancement for its members. That is likely to cause dissension at the lower levels of the party, and it will be fascinating to see how this plays out in the coming years.

Singapore is going to polls. I have one of Singapore's young and dynamic political scientists here on the program, Elvin Ong, who is an assistant professor of political science at NUS in Singapore. He's written on opposition politics generally in Southeast Asia, and he is closely watching the election in Singapore, as are most Singaporeans, but especially the political scientists who are watching things very closely. Elvin, thanks so much for being here on Straight Talk.

Thank you for having me. I'm very happy to be here. Let's get right to it. What's at stake in these elections? Most people look at Singapore politics and say, oh, there's no politics there. Of course, they don't really understand Singapore. But why did it matter? And how will we be able to judge whether or not it's success or less successful for Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and his party, the People's Actions Party, PAP?

For many of your listeners who may not be familiar with Singapore politics, the first thing to know about these elections is that it is the first elections conducted under Prime Minister Lawrence Wong.

And Prime Minister Lawrence Wong is what Singaporeans know as the fourth generation leader of Singapore's People Action Party and of Singapore in general. The first generation leader was Lee Kuan Yew. The second generation leader was Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong. The third generation leader was Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. And now the fourth generation leader is Prime Minister Lawrence Wong.

This election is conducted under a global climate of uncertainty with regards to trade and with regards to global relations, particularly between the US and China. And a lot of Singaporeans are very concerned about the volatility of these trading relations around the world.

Singapore is a very trade-exposed country. And therefore, calling elections at this time is very significant in terms of the mandate that this fourth-generation leadership will get to confront this volatile world. Then the question is, how strong will the mandate be for Prime Minister Lawrence Wong

What will the Singaporeans vote for? Will they vote for continuity and stability in terms of the People's Section Party? Or will they vote for more opposition party members to get into parliament to serve as a track on the PAP? So those are the things that Singaporeans are looking out for.

So those of us who followed Singapore for a long time, notwithstanding the horrible tariffs of the Trump administration and the economic coercion that he's engaging in, the fact is that every election, Singapore raises the questions of the international environment and insecurity and demands continuity and uses the issue of external economic threats and others to justify continuing on. It's almost like this is an old narrative.

We've heard it so often. What is going to be seen as success? Is it going to be that if they drop below the 60% popularity, we all know that the PAP is going to win majority. The system is such that. The question is, what is a sense of success and failure?

If the PAP's vote share is maintained above 60%, I think the PAP will be very happy with it. They will consider that a success. And if the opposition parties only win a maximum of 10 seats in the 97-seat parliament, which is the status quo of the previous parliament, I think the PAP will be very happy with it as well. However, if the vote share falls below 60%,

That will mark the lowest ever vote share that the PAP has ever gotten. And so that will send a very strong signal from Singaporeans that they do not necessarily quite agree with the PAP's leadership. If the opposition parties win a couple more seats, let's say, hypothetically, they extend their seats, that they win from 10 to 20 seats.

That will again be a very strong signal from the Singaporeans that they're not quite agree with PAP's approach. So the two things to look at would be the vote share falling below 60% and the opposition amount of seats that they're in going above 10%. The fact is that Lawrence Wong is the first time that the PAP is going to elections without a Lee family name, at least in key leadership positions.

What we have seen is that there are an unprecedented number of new candidates. One could argue that this is the 5G election, not the 4G election, in that it is electing a whole new young people into the political process. What is happening in the leadership right now? The popular vote may be one thing, but the whole structure and transformation of the PAP is another.

Yeah, I think definitely you're correct that we are slowly seeing a potential crop of new political leaders come in. In these elections, we have seen cabinet ministers retire, I believe. For the cabinet to form after these elections, we should see a lot of new 4G leaders step up. Those who are currently in positions called the Minister of State or the Senior Minister of State, you should see them come up.

But when you talk about the 5G leadership, we are also seeing a new crop of young PAP candidates in their 30s and early 40s who may be poised to even take over Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in the next 10 to 15 years. And amongst these new 5G political candidates, you could say there has been one constant and one change. So one constant that I see is that there are still a lot of candidates

from the civil service and from the military. From the military, I think we see about two or three generals who have quit the military and who are now standing as PAP candidates. And we also see quite a number of ex-civil servants, senior civil servants, about, I think, three or four civil servants who have quit the civil service and who are now standing as PAP candidates. I think these will be the people to watch out to have a career progress in the next 10 to 15 years to be the next prime minister and senior leadership.

Now, the one change that I would say amongst these new 5G candidates is that it seems to be a more female candidate.

I think the PAP has learned a lesson in the past that has been feedback on the ground that there are not enough female candidates being put forth by the PAP. It is something that they should be looking out for. Without female input in terms of political issues or public policies, the policies that the PAP puts out may be seen as being driven by a male-oriented group state.

So I think Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has seen that weakness of the PAP candidate slate, and he has made a conscious effort to try to field more female candidates. And I think of the new candidates that are being fielded, I think about 30 of them, close to half or slightly more than female candidates. So I think that's a good sign. Lee Sin-long did that when he came in his first election as well, bringing in female candidates.

Hope you're enjoying listening to this episode. If you want to find out more about previous episodes, you can reach this on the website, straighttalksoutheastasia.com. The link should also be available in the show notes. If you want to contribute to the production costs of the podcast, you can hit the link, buy me a coffee. Every little penny counts. All that money will not go to me, but go to the producers who are helping me to put the show together. Thanks for listening.

It's interesting to ask about the campaign itself. Everyone is framing this as a bellwether on the leadership. And perhaps in some ways that's a bit unfair in the sense that he's relatively new. There are a lot of serious issues that Singapore has gone through. COVID, of course, Prime Minister Wong was very important in that, in Singapore's response. But also the economy and economic insecurity translates into higher cost of living. Things are very expensive in Singapore.

What are the issues that matter for Singapore voters? Is it a way to send a signal that they can do better as opposed to being a signal to individual leaders? Are the types of issues that people are caring about changing compared to the past? Is it still bread and butter and maintaining your housing and giving me the goodies as necessary? Is politics shifting in a substantive way? I think there's one constant, but also two small evolutions.

As you mentioned, the constant concerns over economic issues such as cost of living, the skyrocketing cost of public housing, as well as healthcare and daily necessities. So voters are really looking at what the government is trying to do to help them manage the cost of living.

Funny you should say that whether it's a constant or is it changing because from my understanding of past general elections stretching back to the 1990s and 1980s, this cost of living issue has been a constant issue that is consistently brought up in elections. That made me wonder why Singaporeans are consistently concerned about the cost of living. It struck me that it may be because of Singapore's economic structure,

the way it is that no wages are just not necessarily keeping up with the cost of living. And I think that should prompt some rethinking on the PAP about why this cost of living issue keeps coming up.

There may be two things that may be slightly evolving in terms of issues that matter to Singaporean voters. Number one is perceived accountability for recent controversy. For those of your audience members who may not know, Singapore government has had a variety of controversies that happened in the past few years in terms of transportation, in terms of what we call the NRIC saga.

where people's identification card numbers were exposed to the public, and so on and so forth. And the way the PAP has managed these particular issues did not seem that there were a lot of accountability being taken by the political leaders vis-à-vis the civil service. So I think the opposition parties are trying to hit the PAP quite hard on having more accountability on these perceived competency flaws in terms of governance.

The last thing that has subtly evolved in Singapore politics, I think, has been the recent saliency of the conflict between Israel and Gaza. In the past, foreign policy issues did not loom large at all in Singaporean elections. But because of the salience of the Israel-Gaza conflict,

This issue has been brought up a number of times by opposition parties, particularly the Workers' Party. They are trying to tell the PAP that they should subtly shift their stances on the Israel-Gaza issue by recognising Palestine as a state. There's controversy over whether Singaporeans should support that or not. With regards to foreign policy issue, I think this is something new that we are seeing that matter to Singaporean voters.

The Malay vote is very important in Singapore. There's been quite a lot of sensitivities. Religious issues are also among Christians are highly mobilized in Singapore. So the sensitivities are more open than they used to be because of the problems of social media. This is a real challenge for Singapore. It is challenging to navigate, especially when you're used to fully controlling the narrative and you can't, and the emotive level subtext as you wisely used.

How is the opposition changing in Singapore? Tell us a little bit about the opposition. Is it just the Workers' Party? Are there other parties that are going to matter? What is the opposition trying to achieve this election?

With regards to the opposition parties in Singapore, again, there are many opposition parties contesting in these elections. But we can differentiate them between the more major opposition parties and the smaller opposition parties. So the major opposition parties are the Workers' Party, the Singapore Democratic Party, as well as the Progress Singapore Party. The Workers' Party has parliamentary representation in Singapore Parliament. The Progress Singapore Party has two non-constituency members in Parliament.

And then the SDP has been a long-standing political party that has been around for decades. And now the smaller opposition parties, there are new parties like the Red Dot United, People's Alliance for Reform and the People's Power Party. And when you mention how opposition parties are changing in Singapore, I think one interesting thing that has happened is that opposition parties are now all putting out manifestos.

And that is quite a curious thing for me because in the past, opposition parties did not necessarily take the manifesto issue very seriously. I recall one small opposition party, their manifesto was six PowerPoint slides. And another opposition party, their manifesto was just four pages of A4 paper.

And now the different opposition parties are putting out fake manifestos. In fact, I just got one in my mailbox the other day. And I thought this was a pretty small opposition party that did not have enough resources, but it seemed that they have enough resources to print out a lot of manifestos to put in people's mailboxes. So I was quite surprised at that. And I think it suggests that they are becoming much more serious in terms of the campaigning. They are taking voter concerns much more seriously in terms of wanting to put out coherent policies.

to try to speak to Singaporeans. Ultimately, whether these manifestos will matter or not is unclear, right? But at least they've got the basics and fundamentals there.

Finally, to answer your question about what is the opposition trying to achieve in this election, it depends on which political parties that you talk to. For the Workers' Party, they already have 10 seats in Parliament. What they want to do is definitely to expand their base. They are competing in three more group representative constituencies and two more single-member districts. If they are able to increase their seat share from 10 seats to 20 seats, I think they'll be very happy.

And this will allow them to build a much bigger base for the future. Now for the Progress Singapore Party. And the Progress Singapore Party has carried two NCMPs that are known as the best losers. I believe what they want to do is to win at least one GRC, one group representative constituency. And they're trying their very best to try to win this GRC in a district called West Coast.

No time to tell whether they will be able to win over the West Coast voters. They came very close in the last general election, winning about 47-48% of the vote share, if I'm not wrong. Let's see how they will do. And finally, for the Singapore Democratic Party, they are converting in quite a few areas as well. I believe their best chance should be in a single-member district called Bukit Panjang.

There has been a long-time candidate from the SDP, Professor Paul Tambaya, who has been working around there for a very long time. In the last general elections, again, he came quite close with a high 40% vote share. They are betting on either Professor Paul Tambaya making a breakthrough for one single seat in Bukit Panjang or for the leader, Dr Chi Seng John, to breakthrough with one single seat in Sembawang West.

As you can see, different opposition parties have different goals and different aims depending on what they have. That's the lay of the land for now. The Workers' Party is contesting in the GRCs. Everyone is putting a lot of attention on Kungol. What do you think about the other chances for the Workers' Party?

Punggol is going to be a very intense competition. Punggol has a very good team by the Workers' Party, but they are also competing against the Deputy Prime Minister, who was shifted to Punggol in the last minute. Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong is now leading the PAP team in Punggol. Time will tell if the Punggol voters will want to vote for the Workers' Party team or the PAP team.

The other group representative constituencies to look at would be Tampines. Tampines is one of the most contentious districts for a couple of reasons. Number one, the share of Malay voters is very high in Tampines. There is currently, if I'm not wrong by some estimates, about 25% of voters there are Malay voters. Rightly, the PAP has always had the Minister for Malay-Muslim Affairs, Minister Masagor Supiple, as the lead team leader.

in Punggol. Now what the Workers' Party has done is to shift their kindly-sold Malay parliamentarian, Mr Faisal Manat, from Aljunied to lead the team in Tampines. And it is being seen among Singaporeans as a fight for the Malay vote, a fight for Malay-Muslim representation. And again, time will tell whether the Tampines voters will be strong one way or another.

Is the campaign changing or is it same old, same old? What do you see as the new dynamic? People were saying that first time they've been in a rally in 10 years because the last election was during COVID. It was very widely attended and there's a sense of excitement for this election among many Singaporean voters. Are politics different? Now we have a lot more impact of social media. What's changed?

I think there is definitely a lot of electoral campaigning on social media, and in particular on the podcast space. So as we are in a podcast right now, but I've been tracking podcasts surrounding these Singapore elections. For the past six to eight months, what we have is close to 100 episodes of podcasts across different platforms featuring political candidates.

A lot of demand is there for candidates to campaign on these podcast platforms, and it gives them a direct route to the voter. Instead of going through, say, the mainstream media, such as The Shades Times, through newspapers, or through media corp, television studios, right? Now they have all these podcast platforms.

which are potentially arguably more influential, and they can put their policies much more directly to the voters. So I think that's one major change, and a lot of opposition parties are engaging on these podcast platforms. But you're right, that is the first time in 10 years that we have physical rallies. A lot of young first-time voters are going to have a lot of fun time going to these rallies and checking out what they

they would say, the vibes of these different rallies. And it's all part of the democratic process and it's all part of the process for them to hear directly from candidates, unfiltered, about what they will want to bring to the various constituencies. So I think a lot of young first-time voters are looking forward to these physical rallies. It will have a major impact on how they feel politics in Singapore should be taking place moving forward.

By the way, just to make sure that it's very clear, this podcast is not part of the campaign. It's explaining this. What are the three different changes that you think that are taking place? A lot of attention is focusing on Singapore politics and the election. It's in a context where Singapore politics has shifted. Arguably, the voters are demanding more. There's a sense of wanting to have alternative views. How do you see this, Alvin? I think there's subtle shift in various arena.

Number one, in terms of public policies, I think there's always constant calls for more inclusive public policymaking in terms of various policies from healthcare to aging to public housing. And there's this call for more inclusive public policymaking

primarily because a not insignificant section of Singaporeans feel that their voices are not necessarily being heard by the current PAP government. And that's why there's a lot of attention being put on the opposition parties. So again, more demand for diversity of voices, more demand for opposition voices to be taken into account when formulating public policies. A second

change that I might think is slowly evolving in Singapore politics in general is there seems to be less tolerance for negative campaigning or less tolerance for what you would call the knuckle-duster approach to Singapore politics where in the past what we have seen is that the People's Action Party

will come out very strong against opposition party leaders. There will be a significant number of name-calling. There will be a significant number of what people say, gutter politics, like poison pen letters and innuendos about people's integrity. But I think starting from 2020 general elections and maybe even 2015 general elections, the public's tolerance for such negative campaigning has decreased significantly.

Whenever the PAP engages with such kind of negative campaigning, there's a little bit more backlash, I feel, against the PAP, whereby people don't necessarily agree with such negative campaigning. They want more positive campaigning for the PAP to share what its vision is, for the PAP to share what its policies that it has for the future. And they see negative campaigning potentially as

not something in the past or something that should only be brought up in very rare instances. So final predictions. Will the PAP lose more seats? Will the Workers' Party lose any seats? And what will matter? In terms of seat share, there is potential.

for the SDP to win one seat. And that seat could either come from Sembawang West under Dr Chee or Professor Paul Tambia, they are running a very organised campaign. They should be able to win one more seat. For the Workers' Party, it's a toss-up between the status quo 10 seats or another GRT to make it 15 seats. I guess the 50-50 prediction for the Workers' Party is kind of a cop-out.

You're also giving a lot of credence to the opposition being able to gain traction. What about the popular vote? You think it'll stay above 60 or below?

For the popular vote, I think it will stay slightly above 60%. For a wide variety of reasons, we cannot forget that not just the three big opposition parties, there are also many small opposition parties. And for those small opposition parties, they seem to be not gaining much traction among Singaporean voters. For those particular cases that they are competing in, I think the vote share for the PAP will be fairly high. Therefore, on average, the vote share for the PAP should hover around 60% or just above 60%.

They have a workover already in Marine Parade. We'll see. Maybe it will be a surprise or maybe not. This has been Professor Elvin Ong of NUS Singapore Political Science Department looking at Singapore's coming elections on May 3rd. Thank you, Elvin, for coming on Straight Talk Southeast Asia. Thank you for listening to the episode. Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast listening app.

If you'd like to keep up to date on current Southeast Asian political affairs, just keep following. This is Bridget Welsh, and I look forward to connecting to you in the next episode. Straight Talk Southeast Asia is produced by Norman Chella, a.k.a. Norm, and you can find him at thatsthenorm.com. Thanks so much for listening.