Singapore’s old order ready for fall by 2016 – Tan Jee Say

This is an interesting title in an article from the South China Morning Post by Toh Han Shih and posted in TRE today. This is what Tan Jee Say believed as quoted in the article. For those who are waiting eagerly for the demise of the PAP after a long rein as the undisputed political party in the island, this must be music to the ears. Jee Say made this conclusion after his recent involvement in main stream politics as candidate for the Presidential Election and also in the last General Election.

Jee Say’s reasoning is mainly drawn from the electoral results of the GE and the by election which did not really prove much except for a bigger dent in PAP’s image of invincibility. To be fair, losing a few electoral seats is not a big deal, really. In the case of Singapore, somehow this is read as a major breakthrough particularly for the WP to take a GRC with an exceptionally strong PAP team.

Things are a bit shaky but would anyone really believe that the PAP will lose power in three years’ time? According to the oracle, PAP should be good for another two terms minimum. And no one would doubt this prediction before the last GE. But then, though there were a couple of slips, notably the poor showing of the Presidential Election in terms of popular votes for the PAP sponsored candidate and the trouncing of the last two by elections, things are not that bad right?

The swift and efficient passing of the White Paper on population increase to 6.9m was an easy victory for the PAP. And the handful of opposition MPs in parliament are unlikely to make any significant impact to say they have arrived and are ready to take over. Low Thia Khiang too did not feel too optimistic about being the PM of Singapore in 2016.

Could there be anything or event that could make such a great impact in the political scene to bring down the powerful PAP? Could the protest rally at Hong Lim be big enough to reshape the mindset of the electorate to vote opposition? A change of regime is highly possible given a 10 to 15 per cent swing in the votes as was seen in Punggol East. With bad leadership, bad policies and bad candidates, PAP will not be able to pull away with another resounding victory again.

So, is Jee Say’s prediction a likely turn of event comes 2016? Objectively and factually, PAP can lose 40 per cent of its candidates and still be returned as the ruling party. There are of course many imponderables that could upset every political scientist’s forecast of what could be possible. And if one is to look at the difficult problems that the govt is facing, problems that have gone from being mere irritations to intolerables, the exploitation of these issues and blowing them up in the face of the PAP intentionally or otherwise, could prove deadly to the ruling party. These problems have 3 years of gestation to become full blown crisis events and for the people to make up their mind to change or not to change the govt in 2016.

Never has Singapore domestic politics been at such state of uncertainties that a regime change is actually possible in three years time. Jee Say may be hoping for the moon, but it is not really that unreachable, really. The dark horse in the computation is actually the foreign element. They could prove to be the game changer, for good or bad, for the ruling govt.