Singapore election: at halfway mark, campaign presents choice between reliability and diversity in Parliament
- Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has sought to cast his party’s key rival as ‘PAP-lite’, telling voters ‘the real thing is much better’
- Immigration, the GST hike and jobs have emerged as major talking points during unusual election campaign
Ultimately the campaign has been framed by “this idea of … vote for what you know, the kind of idea of reliability and security, versus this other issue of voting for a kind of wider representation,” he told Money FM. “So I think you’re seeing that play out on top of the issues as well … sometimes I think observers tend to go, ‘voters are going to be voting about this issue or that’ when often in campaigns it boils down to kind of simple choices.”
“I tell you, why do you want to settle for PAP-lite? The real thing is much better,” Lee said during an e-rally on Saturday.
Earlier in the campaign, WP chief Pritam Singh rejected that criticism, saying the “proof of the pudding was in the eating”. Singh said: “If that was the case, I hope the PAP takes up all our manifesto points and introduces them into their agenda.”
“Rather than challenge the PAP on that, because they have got a very difficult job in that regard and they are going to form the government – I think our role as the opposition is to make sure that when we represent the people in parliament, we are bringing their voices into parliament on that front,” Singh said.