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Ruling party crushes opponents in Singapore election
PAP keeps all but 2 parliamentary seats
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January 2, 1997
Web posted at: 7:30 p.m. EST (2430 GMT)SINGAPORE (CNN) - Singapore voters Thursday returned to power the same party that has ruled the city-state since it was founded in 1959.
Since the opposition only contested 36 of 83 parliamentary seats, the People's Action Party (PAP) majority was never in doubt. In fact, at best, Singapore's opposition parties have never won more than four seats.
But Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong was trying to rebuild declining public support, and campaigned as though each seat were a referendum on his government's popularity. During the heated campaign, tactics proved more controversial than issues.
Goh warned that the opposition was a threat to Singapore's prosperity, and threatened to withhold a multi-billion-dollar housing renovation program from districts that voted for the opposition.
Goh: Voters rejected 'liberal democracy'
"You cannot upgrade all the estates at the same time, can you?" he asked. "There are finite resources. The construction industry is limited, so how do you then allocate people in the queue? Surely, in war, when you have to ration food, you give it to soldiers first."
Goh's comments brought criticism not only from the opposition, but from the U.S. government. An angry Goh accused the United States of interfering, and returned to that theme at a post-election news conference, when he called the victory a "watershed election."
Goh said voters had "rejected Western-style liberal democracy and freedoms (and) were putting individual rights over that of society."
Also during the campaign, Goh accused Tang Liang Hong, a Workers Party candidate in the Cheng San district where five seats were at stake, of being a "Chinese chauvinist."
It was a loaded accusation in a society that is 77 percent ethnic Chinese but prides itself on racial harmony with Malay and Tamil minorities. Tang denied the charges and said he would sue Goh for slander.
PAP's share of vote increases
Goh promised a new subway station, libraries and better schools if his party's margin of victory in the district was 9.5 percent.
The only opposition politicians elected were Chiam See Tong of the Singapore Progressive Party and Low Thia Khiang of the Worker's Party.
The election also reversed a decline in PAP's share of the vote, which had gone from 75 percent in 1980 to 61 percent in 1991. This time, it rose to 65 percent.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Related stories:
- Ruling party wins Singapore elections before vote - December 23, 1996
- Singapore parliament dissolved, elections due soon - December 16, 1996
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