Cherian George, a veteran political commentator and author of Air-Conditioned Nation, is a professor of Media Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University and a member of AcademiaSG.
In this essay republished on RICE, he shares his take on the GE2025 hustings.
RICE does not endorse any political party in Singapore. Refer to our GE2025 content coverage policy for details.
Top image: Leon Tai / RICE Media
Two contrasting images of Singapore coexist in many citizens’ minds. The one that looms larger on Polling Day will help determine the shape of the 15th Parliament after GE2025.
The first is a Singapore that coddles the privileged few, including its unaccountable ruling elites, while requiring ordinary people to grin and bear the vicissitudes of life.
The other is Singapore, the safe haven in an unforgiving and unpredictable world, a refuge for even the humblest Singaporean to be thankful for.
Policy specifics—from GST to CECA, BTO to MRT—do matter, of course. But people make sense of these nitty-gritties through meta-narratives about themselves, their leaders, and their country.
Since 1981, an electorally significant portion of middle-of-the-road voters have identified more strongly with the first picture: a country where policymakers bend over backwards for the super wealthy and stinge on the needs of the common person. When offered credible alternative candidates, they have voted against the People’s Action Party (PAP). This has resulted in a gradual decline in the PAP’s popular vote and a slow but steady erosion of its monopoly of political power.
In the 1980s, Lee Kuan Yew found it hard to come to terms with this reality. As late as the 2011 election, he warned that voters would regret and repent if they voted for the opposition in Aljunied GRC.
It was not a new sentiment, but out of sync with a changed country. Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong accepted his father’s resignation days after the polls (as if the PAP’s poor showing was the Minister Mentor’s fault). Since then, PAP leaders have been able to acknowledge, without betraying any rancour, that Singaporeans want a check on its power and more diverse voices in Parliament.
This hunger for more opposition will probably be satiated only when Parliament arrives at an equilibrium close to the 60:40 split in the popular vote. Reconciled to this long-term trend, the PAP is unlikely to feel devastated if a third GRC and perhaps another single-member seat fall this Saturday. Lawrence Wong and his team could still credibly claim the strong vote of confidence he is seeking.
But it is possible that the PAP will do worse than that, thanks to the quality of opposition candidates who have emerged this year. Gone are the days when the opposition attracted mostly protest votes, requiring mass suspension of disbelief about candidates whose main virtues were unbridled courage and undeserved self-belief.
Today, there are more than a dozen challengers whom neutrals can sincerely support as potentially outstanding Members of Parliament (MPs) who would do Singapore proud. Implicitly acknowledging the strengths of this year’s opposition slate, Lee Hsien Loong asked voters to consider the party brand, not just the individual merits of candidates.
These high-quality challengers’ main difficulty has been reaching out to enough voters within a short campaign period on electoral maps that appear designed to make life harder for smaller parties.
But let’s say the opposition doubles its number of elected seats from 10 to 20, and PAP’s share of the popular vote falls to a historic low of around 55 percent. In this scenario, the PAP would still retain a super-majority in Parliament. Lawrence Wong would go to President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and claim to “command the confidence of the majority of the Members of Parliament”, as the Constitution requires, by a big margin. He would be duly appointed Prime Minister.
So, a doubling of the opposition’s Parliamentary presence would represent the breaching of a psychological and possibly political, not Constitutional, threshold. It would be Wong’s political capital—not his mandate—that might be called into question. Considering his late entry into the party leadership race—more academy sub than galactico—there is a theoretical possibility that another 4G leader who felt robbed of his entitlement would seize the opportunity to reassert his claim.
Such a game of thrones is a highly unlikely outcome of this GE, because Lawrence Wong has not made the mistake of making this election about him. (Unlike Goh Chok Tong, who once gambled his own reputation by declaring that he was standing in every constituency.)
Unless Wong’s vote share in his own ward is much lower than the PAP average (which is not going to happen), it would be very difficult for Chan Chun Sing, to use a hypothetical example, to make his move even if he were so inclined. Everyone would see the poor GE result as a collective 4G failure.
The more pertinent question is how a big fall in PAP support would affect the power balance between 3G and 4G leaders. Insiders could try to argue that the result is a rebuff of 4G, requiring 3G leaders to reassert themselves. If 4G ministers are unable to parry this weak argument, perhaps they are indeed not cut out for national leadership.
Compared with the handover process from the Old Guard to the Second Generation leadership, which was formalised only after the latter had been running things for several years, the 4G leaders took charge with 3G ministers still holding key portfolios. The Lawrence Wong administration has not had the time (or the inclination) to distinguish itself from the Lee Hsien Loong government.
The main difference is the whiteness of their hair, not their uniforms. A big swing against the PAP in this GE is most plausibly interpreted as a vote against 3G as much as 4G. It would be pointless to point fingers. The party as a whole would have to rediscover its adaptive, pragmatic side and embark belatedly on the kind of internal reforms that the 2011 and 2020 results had called for.
Such opposition breakthroughs, whether moderate or major, will materialise if swing voters see their country as a bastion of privilege and wealth whose leaders need to be reminded of who they work for. However, it is quite possible that it isn’t the image that dwells in voters’ minds over Cooling Off Day and into Polling Day.
Like in every country, economic concerns dominate Singapore elections. More than any other issue, Singaporeans will be thinking about their money-related frustrations and insecurities. The opposition parties will benefit if people attribute their anxieties to domestic policies. The PAP will do well to the extent that voters blame external conditions.
And it’s hard to think of any past election year when it was so clear that Singaporeans were being held hostage by irrational, irresponsible, and unpredictable actors over whom none of us had any control.
In ordinary times, it is hard for the government to educate Singaporeans about Singapore’s vulnerabilities in a global economy. This year, Donald Trump is doing the PAP a favour. There is no need for the PAP to explain supply chains, interest rates, and the invisible forces of global competition. The havoc being unleashed by the most powerful man in the world is as visible as Godzilla rising out of the Singapore Strait in some monster movie.
In this environment, the PAP may be exceptionally successful in projecting itself as able and trustworthy guardians of a safe haven in a dangerous world. If so, it is quite possible that it will lose no more seats than the ten currently held by the WP. It could even secure more than 60 percent of the popular vote, which would be a major triumph that defies earlier expectations.
Sensing the opportunity, the PAP has claimed that its critics are accusing it of overreacting to the trade war. It is trying to portray the opposition as unreliable and petty-minded politicians at a time when Singaporeans need to see the big picture and stand together.
For opposition parties to keep the 2020 momentum going, they could afford to brush aside the psychological impact of external threats to Singapore’s well-being. More astute candidates tried to blend the two pictures of Singapore into a new hybrid.
A threatening external environment? Yes.
Singapore, a safe haven requiring capable leadership? Yes.
Singapore, stronger when the government is backed by a dominant party with a super-majority? No. Leaders can better protect Singapore’s interests when they themselves are open to scrutiny and challenge.
After nine days of campaigning, these are the pictures competing for salience in voters’ minds. Which most Singaporeans find compelling, we will discover this weekend.
