Ruling party's resounding win in Singapore elections reflects the success of its political model
Tom Plate finds reasons in Singapore's latest election results for taking its governance model seriously
You don't automatically think of "elections" when thinking of Singapore; many will come to a stop at "authoritarian". Blame the latter perception, if you want, on the first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, for whom dissenting views were an obstacle which a state on a fast-track course of economic development could ill afford, especially if the ruling party had all the right answers, or at least many of them.
But after the iron-willed Lee died, at 91 in March, if you thought that was the beginning of the end of his People's Action Party (PAP), you thought wrong. Last week, the government, led by his son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, surprised the world (and maybe even himself) with a landslide election win that has to be viewed as a vindication of father, son, party and policies - all bound together.
Being bound together is not necessarily so terrible a political thing. Outsiders ridiculed the "nanny state", as the Lees' Singapore has been dubbed. But when it turns out that the "nannies" sport high IQs and aren't stashing the people's money in foreign bank accounts but are on the whole producing positive public policy, such "binding" feels more like the special social glue (or social capital) that is the essence of a successful society.
You know all about the sparkling statistics - a high per capita income, low crime rate, highly rated health system, solid schools and almost a cultural fever for higher education. Problems? There are plenty, including the rich-poor gap, immigrant workers, high-cost housing and so on; but none are remotely unique in the region, much less worldwide; and the Lee government had "street cred" in pushing to solve them.
The late Lee Kuan Yew could be grumpily frank about his tepidity for one-person, one-vote elections. But he also accepted that it gave people a sense of purpose in the polity
To quote a former cabinet member: "The world is changing fast. Governance can't stop changing." To that end, the new government to be formed should, in this post-Lee-Kuan-Yew era, dial up a little more tolerance for dissent and media latitude.
