Post GE 2011 Analysis – Part Three: National Solidarity Party & Singapore People’s Party

National Solidarity Party

Pre GE

No one expected the NSP to field as many candidates as it did, certainly not 24 candidates. But it had a superb chance of entering parliament especially after it managed to recruit some outstanding candidates in Hazel Poa, Tony Tan and Jeannette Chong-Aruldoss, and was contesting in seats with extremely unpopular Ministers such as Tampines led by Mah Bow Tan. Together with the goodwill it built up when it announced the setting up of a Malay Affairs Bureau, the NSP could have been considered the dark horse of the coming elections.

Regrettably, it used up its reservoir of goodwill as soon as it began amassing it.  The first hints of electoral disappointment came when the NSP held a press conference to introduce their new ‘catch’ from the Reform Party. There were hints of the alliance as a marriage of convenience between the 2 groups, with the Tan couple leading one group and Goh leading another. The NSP did not endear itself to voters when it played a game of tough ball with the other parties, most notably the RP and WP, especially in fighting for Moulmein-Kallang GRC and Pioneer SMC. It made numerous strategic errors by announcing its candidates early only to see them moved from Moulmein-Kallange GRC to Chua Chu Kang GRC. Publically challenging the WP which was the most well liked opposition party was also not a strategic move on its part. In the NSPs defence, stories have emerged online (if one would believe them) that the whole public dispute with WP was a way to throw the PAP off-guard.

Chairman Sebastian Teo performed well in a public debate to restore confidence in the parties seriousness, however his performance was in mandarin, and only served to shore up the impression that the party was made up of male Chinese businessman who were otherwise not connected with the ground. This may not be true, but perceptions are hard to change.

GE 2011

What was apparent after Nomination Day was that each team was conducting its own election with little or no central co-ordination. The campaign that Jeanette Chong-Aruldoss ran in Mountbatten SMC was essentially a different campaign from the one run by Yip Yew Weng in Radin Mas SMC, Ken Sun in Whampoa SMC and Steve Chia in Pioneer SMC. The same could be said of the GRCs

Nicole Seah emerged as the key public face of the party, she entered the fray after the public lashing of Tin Pei Ling as a candidate for the party and to her credit took advantage of the similarities between herself and Tin to show herself as the better representative of the youth. She amassed in a short time a cult of personality around herself most expressly by the 100,000 Likes on her public Facebook page. Her campaign was grounded in showmanship, she was the face of the party while the rest like Goh Meng Seng, Tony Tan, Hazel Poa and Jeannette Chong-Aruldoss were the brains in the party. Her antics were befitting of a person in the advertising industry – she knew how to catch the audience – and in her the NSP has found a PR manager that could help them into parliament in the next election.

There was a minor distraction when allegations about misconduct were alleged against Spencer Ng of the Marine Parade team, but once again as in the SDP experience, the issue never blew up.

Goh Meng Seng’s biggest mistake was in fielding the team he did in Tampines. This is no disrespect to the persons fielded in the team, only that they were nowhere near as high profile as some others in the party. Unlike the WP which used a team ranking approach – essentially putting their chips in one GRC team, the NSP split their best chips all over the island. Such was public disaffection with the helming minister that even without the most high profile candidates the team managed a credible 42% of the popular vote, it can only be left to the imagination what would have happened had some of the NSPs stronger (i.e. more well-known and popular) candidates been fielded in Tampines.

What about the minister-specific tactic? It is apparent that the minister-specific tactic is not sustainable in the long run, what if like George Yeo, there is no specific policy to attack the minister with? Regardless, what can be said is that the minster specific tactic did not succeed. Considering that housing was a key issue for the large majority of the electorate, a successful campaign should have seen the minister lose his seat in Tampines, this was not to be. Did then SM Goh Chok Tong lose votes because of his policies  or because of his comments during the election and the presence of Tin Pei Ling and Nicole Seah? A ministry/minister specific strategy was really a way to mask the lack of a common party platform for the NSP, a problem that the NSP would do well to address. A minister/ministry specific strategy was also a vote loser – why would a civil servant want to vote for a party which criticises ministry policy (in the image of the minister), is that not asking the civil servant to slap himself? Anybody would turn defensive if their work was challenged publicly even if they knew they felt their work to be wrong.

Post GE

The only piece of news that has come out about the NSP since the elections was the soliciting for donations by its Marine Parade team especially Nicole Seah, this has caused the cult of personality around her to diminish somewhat. If one googles the NSP website, one would find that little has been done since the elections, in fact the website is still its GE 2011 version, most of its outreach has been on Facebook.

Some of its candidates are continuing on their public walkabouts, most visibly Nicole Seah and Jeanette Chong-Aruldoss. Much of the publicity has been on the Facebook accounts of these candidates. This increases the profile of the candidates to the benefit of the individual but without improving the NSP brand it will come to naught. This was the exact problem that the SPP faced (more on this later). NSP needs to find ways to grow its image as a party and not merely a vehicle for people interested in running for office. NSP cannot just be a political charity and a party with heart (this is no diminishment of their obvious sincerity in serving) but must improve its hard credentials especially what it stands as embodied in a party ideology (see commentary).

Commentary

The NSPs greatest strength is also its greatest flaw. It is a broad church that accepts people of all strips, but it has no fixed policy, no ideology to identify itself with. The WP has a very clear idea of a “First World Parliament” and the blue of the working class to identify with – a sort of democratic socialism; SDP has its intense focus on rights and freedoms to identify with – a sort of liberalism, but the NSP does not have anything that people will associate it with (apart from Nicole Seah). It seems to have allowed people with their own agenda to enter into it and run on its ticket, this is a good means of building a party and increasing its size rapidly, but it is not sustainable in the long run if the NSP harbours the intention of entering office as government one day (although this is not what it claims to want to do in its party manifesto).

The official party ideology is that it is “democratic, pragmatic and progressive” party that treasures national values and works towards a society for all. While democratic is understandable what exactly does the term pragmatic and progressive mean in terms of a party ideology? Progressivism is a political attitude, but progressive to what end in what direction? Pragmatic by what barometer? How does one be pragmatic and treasure national values – especially if the situation arises when national values are not pragmatic (e.g. comunalism is pragmatic for entering parliament, but it is not a national value). The cynic would say that it means the party has no ideology but moves with the wind, that it wants to be all things to all man but will end us as nothing to every man. This is perhaps the biggest challenge the NSP faces, how does it differentiate itself from the PAP, WP and SDP without losing the majority of voters? Too close to either and it would be better off joining them, too far from the ground and it would be better of becoming a social charity.

The NSP was also the best case study into the rationality and discernment of the Singapore electorate. Its spread of votes was the largest and it showed that Singaporeans were willing to give credible candidates a chance. Credible by whose measure, one might ask. Credible by the measure the PAP has put forth – educated, and generally successful in their work. Purist would challenge that the PAP’s measure of educated is not the only measure, that is true, but it is the yardstick by which Singaporeans have been brought up to think of as the right one. Any serious party, with ambitions of entering parliament and becoming government would do well to take heed of this. Credible candidates such as Jeannette Chong-Aruldoss did well; well less credible ones such as Ken Sun, Yip Yew Weng and Steve Chia did not do as well. Marine Parade did well partly because Nicole Seah was seen as a more credible candidate than Tin Pei Ling. In contrast, NSP’s Jurong GRC team suffered a trouncing because its candidates were nowhere near as credible as the slate that the PAP had, especially with Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Halimah Yaccob in the lineup.

There have been recent talks of a loose NSP-SDP alliance, this might be possible and it could even be brokered by the Alex Tok and Tony Tan since they were both colleagues previously in the Reform Party. The problems existent in both parties would be smoothed over since the SDP and NSP have complementary strengths, but the lack of an ideology means that NSP would have more to lose in joining hands with the SDP since it has nothing to fall back on should the venture not work out, here a clear party ideology is imperative. Other problems exist too, using NSPs pragmaticism the first problem that would appear is that it is not pragmatic to be liberal, definitely not in getting into parliament.

Singapore People’s Party

Pre GE

The SPP was originally a component of the SDA but left the SDA after a public run-in with the other members of the SDA such as Desmond Lim and PKMS. The SPP brand was more of the Chiam See Tong brand, it was not the party that carried the candidate but the candidate that carried the party.

Chiam See Tong, true to his ability to sense the ground had stated his intention to leave Potong Pasir SMC and challenge then Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng in Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC. Chiam had smelled blood seeing as Wong was reeling from the public anger of his mishandling of the Mas Selamat Affair and his colleague then education minister Ng Eng Hen had made numerous mistakes in the education ministry including the bungling of the issue on mandarin standards. He made a bold move by expressing his desire to contest without having the candidates to back him up.

Chiam first tried to link up with the Reform Party but had problems when the other members of the SDA refused to accept the terms with which the RP wanted to join the Alliance. It later emerged that Desmond Lim was instrumental in blowing up the whole fiasco. Sin Kek Tong then continued the bad press by publically taking issue with Chiam’s lack of contribution to the party from his MP’s allowance. None of this helped further the SDA’s cause, it was only after leaving the SDA that the SPPs luck turned for the better. As if knights in shining armour the trio of Jimmy Lee, Wilfred Leung, and Benjamin Pwee announced that they would join Chiam in the challenge. Pwee and Lee were both previously government scholars (Pwee was a senior government official), which in Singapore adds extensively to their political credibility. It helped that Pwee belonged to a family of grassroots activist formerly with the PAP in Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC.

SPP’s fortunes took a slight negative turn when Lina Chiam gave a performance to forget in the televised debate on Channel News Asia. Perhaps because of Vincent Wijeysingha’s (SDP) spirited debate and Gerald Giam’s (WP) controlled discussion, Lina Chiam was made to look out of her depth. For sure some members of the public lost confidence in the SPP because of the performance, perhaps if the SPP had rectified its CEC to co-op Benjamin Pwee of Jimmy Lee, their performance could have matched WP or SDP.

However SPP managed to protect its campaign by making uplifting announcements such as setting up a special fund and the setting up of special policy committees.

GE 2011

As the hustings entered into full swing, it became apparent that the SPP leadership (Chiam and Lina) had decided that Pwee and Lee would become the main spokespersons for the party. It was these two man who were responding to the comments made by the PAP and it was these two man who were given the most airtime at rallies. Chiam’s campaign was more of the moral support although it was evident that Chiam was the leader in spirit. Chiam was the inspiration behind the successful run of the SPP in Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC and Potong Pasir GRC.

The party’s performance in Hong Kah North SMC was forgettable, with the PAP opponent Dr Amy Khor ending up as best winning candidate of the whole elections. Much can be attributed to the fact that SPP’s natural location is nowhere near Hong Kah North SMC and its candidate did not excite the populace.

Post GE

SPP will be able to keep itself in the public eye because of the NCMP position by Lina Chiam. It is probably not surprising that Benjamin Pwee has been selected to be in charge of drafting parliamentary speeches, and one can expect that all Lina Chiam says in parliament will be the words of Pwee. A cynic would sardonically comment that Pwee is the puppet master and Lina the puppet (no offence is intended by the writer on this point). Nonetheless, what has become clear is that Pwee will eventually be a leader of the party, and already his presence has seen (if the news is to be believed) some qualified people offer themselves as possible candidates for the next election.

The SPP websites indicates that the SPP is now looking for a headquarters, perhaps strangely enough, some 15 years after its founding. Better late than never one would guess.

Commentary

With the loss of Potong Pasir SMC, Singapore bids farewell to its longest serving opposition MP. Perhaps this was coming all the time. Until the appearance of Benjamin Pwee, Wilfreud Leung and Jimmy Lee the party did not seem to have any form of succession plan and looked to be purely a vehicle for Chiam to run for elections. The party would be better off focusing its efforts in Bishan Toa-Payoh GRC for the next elections, since Hong Kah North SMC would be too far from its base of support and Potong Pasir SMC would in all probability be wiped off the electoral map for the next elections.

Chiam and Low Thia Khiang (WP) could provide a very interesting case study on how to run a political party. What was it that allowed the WP to grow which did not allow the SPP to grow? Was it the political nous and street smarts of the businessman Low or was it that Chiam was unable to go beyond the personality politics of the generation past. SPP would do well to take a leaf from WP’s books and study how to come back stronger in the next elections

One obvious lack that the SP suffers from is the of minority candidates; this is an issue that the SPP seems to be addressing with its policy committees. Another issue that the SPP needs to address is how to build up its party image, considering that it does not have a very clear party manifesto and ideology.

In the NSP analysis it was mentioned that the SDP and NSP had spoken about merger, it would seem that NSP and SPP are much better partners for merger. Both sides were campaigning in regions relatively close to each other and because of a similarly blank canvass of ideologically(allowing them to paint it together) – ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ is neither an ideology nor a good long term platform -  they would meet less stumbling blocks than an alliance with SDP would allow.

Introduction

Part One – The Worker’s Party

Part Three – Singapore Democratic Party

Part Four – People’s Action Party