Both the Peoples Action Party and the Workers Party held their ground. The results give the Lawrence Wong Government little incentive to change. Video and full transcript below.

Election-related explainers and other resources

For this GE, AcademiaSG released several videos and other resources. They can be found on our GE2025 page.

Full transcript of our Morning After webinar

Cherian George
Good. morning. It is the fourth of May 2025 I am Cherian George. I’m part of collective called Academia SG, which also includes Linda Lim, Teo You Yenn and Chong Jia Ian. Welcome to our post GE webinar. We we don’t normally wake up this early or so forgive all of us if we appear groggy and slightly incoherent, but we still felt it is would be helpful to talk about what’s happened yesterday, polling day with some of the brightest minds that we can find. Of course, there are many more, but nine is already plenty. Well, eight plus me is already plenty. So I don’t think I’ll need to introduce the topic. I’m going to dive right in and start introducing our guests, our first pair of our panelists, Bertha Henson and Walid Jumblatt Abdullah, welcome Bertha and Walid. Bertha and Walid. You know, it’s have been taking part in an occasional webinar series, or rather a podcast series called Bertha meets Walid BMW, which, as far as I’m concerned, has been the Rolls Royce over this campaign period, great pleasure to meet two great friends, Bertha, of course, former Straits Times journalist whom I worked with in the 1990s I think on I’m very sure on this panel, Bertha has the most experience following elections since, should I reveal it? Yes, I will, since the late 1980s right? So my first was in 1991 Bertha is also the author of the book GE 2020. Fair or Foul. Walid Jumblatt Abdullah, is probably the most sought after political commentator over the last more than one week, so very grateful that he’s made time for us. In fact, he’s gotta leave early because he’s rushing off for a book talk, which starts at 1pm for his latest book. Why Palestine?, Walid of course, is the host of Teh Tarik, for for a change? Well, not really for a change, but you know that he could as easily be the interviewer, but today he doesn’t get to be. Instead, I get to interview him. Yeah. So the for those of you that familiar with the BMW concept, it devoted half an hour to discussing three times, two, six talking points from the from the recent, you know, what’s been happening on the campaign front I don’t think we’ll have time to give you a time for six, but I’m going to start right away and ask you, maybe starting with Bertha, the journalist known to write the first draft of history. So what does that draft look like to you this morning?

Bertha Henson
Oh, that depends, yeah, whether I’m writing officially or unofficially.

Cherian George
Honestly and sincerely.

Bertha Henson
Oh, okay, honestly, honestly, okay, for me, it was such a confounding election. I mean, you know, this is an election where a new prime minister in an old party has basically improved his work, you know. So it’s basically, I don’t understand this because, you know, that means I read the room wrongly. I don’t even feel I should be here, you know, because if I’ve analyzed it wrongly, I don’t know what else I can get wrong by speaking now, you know, so, so basically, well, I congratulate him. It does mean that, you know, within the PAP, within the PAP, his his base is consolidated, yeah. You know, there were a lot of talk about, you know, how he has to do it to get a good mandate. And, you know, or his position in the PAP itself might be compromised. In fact, I think that was the reason, well, not directly related to PAP. There’s a reason why he got such a big share the PAP. I think it’s simply because, okay, I’m sorry for saying this, but I think it’s because his posters are everywhere. Okay? I mean, so basically, his posters are everywhere. He’s a new guy. And people say, Oh yeah hor, the new guy here. Maybe we should give him a chance. And they went for it. I’m not sure. This narrative about stormy water and everything you know, weather navigation really works here, yeah, yeah. But you know, let’s see what, what, Walid says.

Can’t hear you.

Cherian George
I’m not worth hearing. I think you raised a couple of very frank points, starting with the point that actually we don’t know a lot, right? A lot of this is a hunch. I mean, why did the votes work out this way? I think it’s important to foreground the next two hours with that very clear admission, right, that exit polls in this country, maybe some people do it, but we don’t right. So often, what we’re going to see over the next few weeks or months is different pundits as well as interested parties trying to interpret the results to their own advantage. And you’ve been honest and obviously, actually we don’t know. But here’s one possibility that maybe is because Lawrence Wong was so prominent. Last time a Prime Minister, I think more explicitly made the election about him that was Goh Chok Tong. Remember who in one election actually said, I am contesting in every constituency? Lawrence Wong, I think quite smartly, didn’t do that. It was more, yes, but I think

Bertha Henson
There was something else as well. You know, I noticed that his colleagues also didn’t do quite do that, which I thought was a little weird. I thought it would be a very big vote getter, you know, but you know, this focus on the team and leaders and all that, I would have just gone out and say, hey, look, you have a new prime minister. This is my new boss. Support him, right?

Cherian George
They learned. They learned from Goh Chok Tong’s mistake because he probably overplayed that. Okay, I don’t know, but yeah, thanks for the those initial thoughts, Walid?

Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
So I have a couple of thoughts. So one, it is a real mandate for PM Lawrence Wong, above 65% beyond the wildest imaginations and like, like versa. I got a few things wrong, some things right, but a few things horribly wrong, especially I couldn’t I couldn’t imagine that Prof Tambyah would get below 40%, and that was just not on my bingo card, I suppose. So some some things wrong. It’s a real mandate for PM Lawrence Wong, and that should actually strengthen his position, because he promised a more open Singapore, you know, more listening. And I think now it strengthens his position in society, but also in his party. “Look, you have to listen to me now. This is the way forward. This approach works.” Because I also had worried if his personal vote share had decreased, and Bertha and I discussed this before, if his personal vote share decrease in his constituency, and then the national average decreased, then people say, “Ah, see, your openness wouldn’t work. That’s why we need to go back to old school hard knocks.” But it has also, hopefully that is the path forward. The other thing is, I would say that. And you know now we are, maybe a lot of us, a lot of viewers, like the first stage of grief, right? So we are still at denial stage. So, so some of the things that, especially yesterday, when I was doing the Jom live stream, a lot of people were saying “Gerrymandering is the number one factor, that gerrymandering is a factor that explains this the most.” And I would say it’s not, no, it did affect results. Of course it did. But in terms of vote share, I don’t think you can just pin the national swing based on gerrymandering, because gerrymandering affects, firstly, constituencies more than national vote share, and secondly, the nine constituencies that didn’t see any redrawing of boundaries, two of them were workers parties like seven including Bukit Panjang. All of them, the PAP did better than they did the previous time. So all of them. So you cannot say that that is because of gerrymandering, because didn’t that didn’t happen for those seven. And in fact, in Jalan Besar, Josephine, Teo’s team got more than Tharman’s team ever did, including in 2020, I mean, just, I mean, I would just like us to pause a bit for some reflection, right? So does that mean that Josephine Teo is more popular than Tharman? So that’s the first thing that the other if I could just one more point, Prof. WP is strong performance and PSPs, I think PSP is gone as a party, because they didn’t win. Progress Singapore Party. But WP actually in terms of vote share in the constituencies they they contest against the PAP. They got slightly more than the PAP. So they are still, they are still the brand name. They are big move, moving Faisal to Tampines, almost paid off. It did pay off in a sense that they got the NCMP seat from 10 minutes. So to some extent. But it showed that also, there are other things that factor, for instance, groundwork, because the PAP both sold Baey Yam Keng and Sun Xue Ling as the chairman, chairperson of their town councils if they were to be elected. Because by all accounts, Baey Yam Keng and soon Sun Xue Ling are the two most on the ground MPsin their own constituencies. So maybe that is what people value, right, rightly or wrongly, maybe that is what people value. So I would say Baey Yam Keng and Sun Xue Ling, in many ways, carrying the teams in their constituencies. Just just the idea of WP being the strongest party. And it has, but now it has 12 seats in parliament, two NCMP seats sentences that it did win, then I think parliament is actually worse off without another party. I would have not that. Of course, if you win, you deserve it, right? But if SDP…

Cherian George
Think they are frozen? But — complete the thought you’re saying that Parliament might have been more interesting with Chee Soon Juan in it.

Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
Yes, yeah, or another party other than the WP.

Cherian George
Yeah, yeah. I agree with that last point. I think that that’s a kind of a loss for for Parliament’s diversity. Well, one thing that makes me different from Bertha and wallet is that I don’t have to admit that I’m wrong, because I never made a bet. I was quite open to the possibility that it would be status quo. Yeah, both of you have raised one what this will do to Lawrence Wong’s personal standing? That’s a hugely important question. We’re going to spend a lot more time at the at the tail end of this of our two hours, discussing that in depth, including maybe tips on who he should have in cabinet, etcetera. Who knows where this panel will go, right? But, but I do want to, while you mentioned the vote share a couple of times, and here is where maybe my view is a little different, and I’m voicing this difference partly to show that, you know, we’re not guilty of groupthink in this panel, right? So we have a diversity of views, so I’m going to actually contradict you, okay, and say that the results, although they have been interpreted as dramatic, there’s actually another way to read them. Yeah. Of course, there are media that have called it a landslide, yeah, both Straits Times and Channel News, Asia, foreign media as well. BBC, Guardian, I think actually, well, Lawrence Wong did has not used the term landslide. And I think his is a more defensible assessment. He calls it a clear and strong mandate, yeah, clear signal of trust, stability and confidence in your government. Yeah. So why is it that I don’t think that it is actually a landslide? I care a lot about metaphors, right? Because they can, and cliches, because they are easy, but they can actually be quite misleading. To me, a landslide is a sudden dramatic shift on the ground. So what is the sudden dramatic shift on the ground? It might be shocking, but it’s only shocking to those who got it wrong. Yeah, not like I said. We don’t have polls to tell us what the state of public opinion actually was, yeah, so whether it is stunning or shocking, even that is kind of subjective, it may say more about the assessor and the electorate. Why do I not think it’s a landslide? Contrary to the conventional wisdom that has been being pushed out by media, is this the other way I read it? Is basically that, hey, in 2020 the opposition took 10 seats from the government, and the PAP got six out of 10 votes. In this election, the opposition got 10 seats from the government, the PAP won six and a half out of 10. That doesn’t sound like a landslide to me. I think it is a landslide relative to expectation. It’s not objective, right? So ironically, if the same results had happened in 2020 nobody would have used it as a said that was a landslide, right? Right? It’s only a landslide because we expected the momentum to continue. Yes, me the real I mean, I would read it, and again, I want to emphasize that we are all like feeling our way in the dark, right? Because we don’t have polls, etc. But my best guess is that this is actually a status quo vote. It’s not a landslide the status quo vote. It is a vote in favor of the status quo. In terms of ruling party, it is also a vote in favor of the opposition status quo. And this, I think, has been undernoticed by the media so far. Let me pull up this data right. The Workers Party Vote share in seats that it contested in 2020, 50.49

This year. Basically no difference. 50.04 in spite of contesting 30% more seats. So I mean, as you know, if you’re going to contest a significantly larger terrain, you’d expect your vote share to go down, but it is maintained. Yeah, so how is this rebuff of the WP? The WP is actually withstood trend. So what we I think the fuller story, the way I read it, is that what we see is yes, a strong vote for the PAP status quo. Greater discernment, not for the first time, but it’s accentuated, voters no longer are in the protest vote mode. And I think this is why, in the past, we used to put such great stock in the vote share, because we assume that the vote share is proxy approval rating of the government. Because most votes in 1990s were protest votes. We don’t really care about quality opposition. I think the protest vote component in the Singapore electorate has dramatically shrunk, and now people are making positive votes for opposition they like. And ironically, precisely because the Workers Party has been so impressive, it’s made the other parties look so bad. Which is, which may exactly be, why suddenly you’re beginning to see the PAP getting like 80% and, you know, figures that wouldn’t have gotten in the days of the protest vote, and you’re beginning to see these paradoxes, like even Tharman’s record breaking vote being beaten. Yeah. So, so that’s my reading of it. I want to get another of our colleagues in. Ian, are you there? Can you because I’m sure you’ve got stuff to say about this. Ian, do you want to jump in on this point?

Chong Ja-Ian
Yeah. So actually, I think many people were talking about a landslide last night. Actually didn’t think so. I mean, the PAP did really well, but the overall vote share was 65% which is, you know, better than the 60% in in 2020. But I think it’s, it’s not, you know, it doesn’t get close to, if we look at someone’s presidential vote, which is a national votes, but 70% so I think, um, they, that’s the the 5% difference is what they could have achieved, but they, but they did not. I agree with Cherian that there is a status quo bias, or, I would say, a flight to familiarity. Singaporean voters are notoriously, I’ve said this has been rewarded in three times, notoriously risk averse and skittish. So you know, some of you might have heard the term kiasu, kiasi Kia zenghu, right? So scared of losing, scared of dying, scared of the government. That’s one way that people have described Singaporeans. I think that translates into some of our voting behavior. So at a time of uncertainty, there is a search for something that’s familiar, and it so happens that the Workers Party has entrenched themselves as a familiar, familiar face, so to speak. And I think that’s reflected in the in the in the vote share that Cherian had just talked about. I think also when you look at the Workers Party performance in several constituencies, they actually improved their vote. So I think that that’s the sort of familiarity aspect of it,

Cherian George
And the vote share bump, let’s be clear, is what? It’s just four points. Yeah, yeah. So again, my hunch is that we need to stop looking at the vote share as approval rating proxy, and actually it is highly sensitive to the quality of opposition challenge.

Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
If I could maybe push back a little on on that, on what you said from Prof Ian Chong as well. So the Workers Party has always been much stronger than the the other opposition parties. There have always been “mosquito” parties, and we have to thank Bertha for popularizing that race in the lexicon. So the gap has always been there.

Cherian George
It was there the historical point before Bertha cuts you off I will, because I’m older than Bertha or as old as right, always is relative, yeah, okay, remember very clearly a time when Worker’s Party was unelectable, right? NSP was the party in town.

Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
Yeah, if you use 2011 workers, party has been stronger and and this our reference. Best reference point is 2020, as well, both for flight to familiarity and for being stronger than other opposition parties. So RDU, Red Dot United just started for four weeks, or six weeks before the 2020, general election, up against Tharman, and Tharman got 75% so there is something still in the vote share. I understand that maybe it’s it’s we would like to downplay. I don’t think that it’s so easily downplayed. I think for sure, the Workers Party strength, we’ve talked about it already, but the other parties, including SDP as well, have basically got a thrashing right? So I think that is something in the general mood as well we cannot just easily explain away by saying that the vote share doesn’t matter because a constant can explain variation. 2020, and 2025, the gap between WP and the other opposition parties was already there, so I’m not sure whether that can explain the variation that we see today.

Bertha Henson
Yeah. More concerned, sorry, Cherian, can I? Can I join in? Yes, I’m more concerned about, you know, what was said about the Worker’s Parties, candidates and their credentials? You know, they’re all like very good people. You see, the flip side has happened. Nobody really looked at the PAP side of candidates, did they? I mean, essentially, what has what is come down to is your anchor is the one who’s holding everybody up. You know, we take a look at everybody on the WP slate and slate. Say, Oh, this one got this, got this, got this. But, you know, we really don’t pay much attention to the others on the PAP slate. So

Chong Ja-Ian
That’s a real free pass, right? Huh? Yes, that is the real free pass.

Bertha Henson
That is the free pass, exactly what I want to say. So we are giving a free pass to the newbies. And the newbies are supposed to be your renewed, your people who are going to do the renewal, right? But, you know, you don’t really see much renewing in the campaign is all the heavyweight ministers doing the heavy lifting. And basically, is what they did not do that seems to be more important. No, they didn’t do so much smearing. They didn’t put Joe Teo up. They didn’t put Vivian up. You know, all the lightning rod people are put away. The newbies didn’t have really much chance to make a mistake, you know? So, so basically, I think it has the the position has been reversed. It is now for the PAP to basically take a stronger look at its own people. And I worry, because if I look at the 2020 batch, it’s more or less the same thing. A big slate of newbies came in, but you look at their parliamentary record, and not so hot and then basically six people or so went off. Some of them are retained. Nobody really talks about their parliamentary record, but they are not that great, no.

Chong Ja-Ian
So you know, Can I comment on this? I think for the PAP, yes, there’s the free pass thing, but we sometimes look a lot at candidates in Singapore, but what we also tend to forget is party machinery. Party machinery. Party machine politics, right? So the PAP, by far has the most mature party machine. So it’s easier for them to push out whatever candidate. Plus, there’s the assumption that they know what they’re doing. So once you’re so I’m probably assuming, I’m talking about the grassroots. I’m talking about, you know, the other, you know, their whole sort of army of volunteers, essentially, so they are able to do far more in to in terms of voter outreach, in ways that I think compensates for the candidates, whereas for smaller parties, and I would include the WP here too, they have a lot of volunteers and all that, of course, but it’s doesn’t match the PAP. So how they compete? They’ll have to talk about a lot more about the candidate quality. So I think it’s not an apples to apples comparison. There are different dynamics that are inherent to the different ways that the parties are structured, and there are different assets and liabilities.

Cherian George
the party machinery gap would be especially significant in the larger the constituency is right. Which I wonder was a factor in Paul Tambyah unexpectedly performance. Because if I’m not wrong, that’s he’s in the biggest. SMC, yes,

Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
33,000

Cherian George
Right? Yeah. It’s huge. It’s a huge SMC, yeah.

Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
So Bukit Panjang, but again, that machinery. So the comparison is 2020 he got 46% in 2020.

Chong Ja-Ian
2020, is a bit different, because the machinery cannot work in the same way that was a COVID election.

Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
No, I get I get it. But he has had five years to be more familiar to the to the voters, five years. And he, by his own admission, he does a lot of groundwork, a lot of block visits. So I’m not sure whether the machinery, machinery explanation, can explain and also cannot explain the variation in PAP candidates as well. So I think butters over over arching points still remains right, because for all of the machinery, Ng Chee Meng got whatever he got,

Chong Ja-Ian
Okay. So I think for the machinery, I think is a base argument. There’s going to be variation around, around the machinery argument based on the candidates, but in terms of your baseline, the PAP will start off with an advantage. I think, in in when we talk about party machine, yes, it, it’s not about an individual candidate or the immediate group around them doing block visits there. You know, Pual Tambyah obviously did a lot, but it’s, you know, what else you’re doing on the ground all the time, what kind of other kinds of activities you’re you’re presenting there,

Bertha Henson
You’re talking about the community stuff with it.

Chong Ja-Ian
That’s your that’s your party machinery, that that’s your machinery.

Bertha Henson
So I agree. I don’t think, Walid, you’re quite correct. I mean, I won’t entirely agree with you that the gerrymandering or boundaries thing did not have an effect. They did the PSP, is, I think it’s probably quite irresponsible, the demise of the PSP? Yeah, I think the PSP is going to split. And, you know, and basically for Bukit Panjang, yeah, you know, it was surprising, but I think maybe we should come down to crediting the incumbent MP for doing their job and COVID 19. Remember Paul Tambya was everywhere. So, you know, the familiarity level was also very hard. So people know of him, even if you don’t live there, you know. So there are other, I think, other factors in play. So the boundaries, one to me, was one, the second one was over the CCs. So, you know, in fact, I think we should take advantage, or rather that political the politicians should take advantage of what Lawrence Wong said that he will allow a debate, you know, on the role of the PA, on the CCs, and whether or not you know, it should be open up. Um, if he wants you know an open political system and he serves Singaporeans equally, then something must be done there. So I would put, I would put, you know, him well, on the spot, on it.

Cherian George
Before we close the subject of the boundaries. I think if I gather the threads that you brought up so far, I think Walid is right that the boundary redrawing, logically, would make no difference to the vote share, right? Because he’s talking about total number of votes wherever they are, right? But they could make significant difference to individual races, yeah. And so in that sense, I think Dr Chee Soon Juan last night, who was, of course, very upset about this, is raising a valid point.

Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
Yeah, he, he has every right to be I think he has been hard done by by the redrawing. And maybe I think we, our segment is going to end in a bit, is it? Oh, yeah. So I wanted to say also looking forward, because looking at what has happened in the elections, I think it’s also an opportune time. Just now, Bertha already mentioned, we should ask the PM for this. So I think there are few institutional reforms that we really need to think about, right? So the NMP scheme, I think, is something that we really need to discuss or later on as a nation, the EBRC and the independence of the committee, because that leads to all these questions about unfairness and gerrymandering, and I think cooling off day needs to go, to be honest, because that gives mainstream media an unfair advantage, the ruling party, an unfair advantage through through mainstream media. And then, of course, people in association with the establishment will say, but social media favors the opposition. They say, Okay, we are not paying for social media, that’s the first thing. But second thing, if you remove that, then that advantage goes away as well. And then the third one is the GRC and Bertha and I have discussed this at great length. It forces us to choose between candidates we like and candidates we don’t like, as in, choose them together. So if somebody likes Baey Yam Keng in Tampines, but may not like Baey Yam Keng’s partner, and then that that is, I think, an affront to democratic sensibilities. Even without changing the constitution, we can just reduce all GRCs to three and then have a single member constituencies. All is needed is political will.

Bertha Henson
It’s not just that. I think basically, you can basically just make sure that the vote share, vote count is based on subdivisions, not just the not just based on GRC level. That will give you a firmer idea of how, you know, the the ward, the subdivision, MP did then, you know, yeah, and they have it. I mean, it’s not as though, in fact, I would tell the opposition. You should start the ball rolling, you know, yours, yeah, you know. So why don’t you give me yours? And then, then you can basically make an argument that, basically, we should open it up to, all

Cherian George
We also want to spend a good amount of time later on, talking about the the points that you raised, both of your raise, which is that a lot of what needs to be done can’t be done within the campaign period, right? So, for example, reviewing the how boundaries are run, reviewing PA and CC governance and so on, right? It’s too late to start thinking about the once the writ of election. So let’s just talk about that. Media, thanks for bringing it up. That’s actually a subject of our next segment. But before we let you go Walid, I do want to tap your deep knowledge of the WP and ask what you think, or what you think should be the case regarding how they would use their two NCMP seats. Because, of course, they’ve got four individuals who choose from,

Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
Yeah. So I do think that, firstly, the product to Faisal Manap. I think he single handedly carried the Tampines team, and there was a significant swing in favor of the WP. And if anyone has been to Tampines, Tampines is one of the better managed estates. So for him to be able, for WP to get that swing in Tampines is not insignificant. So for the NCMP slates, I think the WP traditionally uses it as a breeding ground, or to familiarize their new candidates with Singaporeans. So I do not think Faisal will be an NC MP, nor do I think he wants to, nor do I think he should. I think it would probably be Michael or Eileen, just based, just based on… So the other one would be Andre, presuming that Andre is from Jalan Kayu, and they want to get Andre in. So then one person from the 10 PS team, and that would be either Michael or Eileen. Michael has already got those based on his performances online, so I would think Michael is a odds on favorite. So I’m not. I’m just thinking whether they also want to give more exposure to, you know, and maybe put a woman…

Chong Ja-Ian
I disagree slightly with you, Walid. I disagree with you on that. I think, I think Eileen May be a stronger candidate, rather than Michael just

Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
So, yeah, so I was, I was going to talk about Eileen, actually. So I think that that is a possibility as well. I suspect I haven’t talked to any of them. I suspect they would put Michael, but if I were them, I would put Eileen.

Cherian George
Just to reiterate the point that Walid made. I mean, for those in the audience who don’t follow these things as closely, can you remind us how the NCMP system has actually been an important stepping stone, which kind of to help overcome the familiarity hurdle that Ian was talking about.

Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
Yes. So there have been three NCMPs from the WP that eventually became full time, became elected MP. So the first one was Sylvia Lim, and by her own characterization, she said she benefited a lot from the NCMP scheme, even though the WP opposed the NCMP scheme. But she personally benefited from the air time, from the coverage in the media that she got. The other two are Gerald Giam and Leon Pereira. Both of them eventually became elected MP. So I think there is no substitute for that. Basically, you get the media coverage you get, and now parliamentary debates are, I mean, Leong Mun Wai is a household name because of his NCMP position. So that’s how WP has benefited from the NCMP scheme.

Cherian George
Thank you so much. So we have to say goodbye to Walid because he is heading to book talk at The Projector, which is, of course, it’s a very arty place, which explains why Walid is wearing black. Now, no other reason just to clarify that.

Chong Ja-Ian
We’re gonna parachute him to The Projector, right?

Cherian George
So, so while it’s a new book, in case you’re one of the few people in Singapore who hasn’t heard about it, is the national bestseller. Why Palestine? So thank you for writing that book. And those of you who don’t have it yet, you know, please sign up for the waiting list. I don’t I’m not even sure if it’s still available.

Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
Thank you. Yes,

It is. It is back on shelf. I think thank you for this group therapy.

Cherian George
So thanks Walid and so you say goodbye to the W part of the BMW team. Bertha, stay on. Ian join us later. I will now welcome Natalie Pang. Wonderful. This going so smoothly. Wonderful. Thanks so much for my very cooperative panelists. So Natalie Pang is with the Communication and New Media department of the National University of Singapore. She has studied for many years the digital landscape in Singapore, including all those you know, sexy topics like social media and influencers and so on. And of course, Bertha, at one level, is a social media influencer, but also has deep mainstream media experience. So you know that can’t think of two better people to to discuss our next topic, which is the media right? I will. What direction do you want to go in? Maybe? Let’s start with you. Natalie, we haven’t heard from you yet that there was talk about social media being an some kind of equalizer, if it is, there seems to be no big impact. What’s your take in general?

Natalie Pang
Actually, it’s a pity Walid has left because I would like to disagree with one of the points he made. I think so. I think the point he made was how social media favors the opposition? I actually disagree with that. It may have favored the opposition at one point, especially in the beginning. I think back to maybe the 2011 election, or maybe even a little bit of a 2006 election, right? But I think if we look at especially how the PAP has been using social media in the last five years, I don’t think it necessarily favors the opposition. So I think one of the things that people often ask me is about the democratic potential of social media, about how it can actually give voice, amplifies, unheard voices and all of that, right? But I think one of the things we must also remember is that social media platforms, they kind of mirror a market economy. So and in a market economy, right, but instead of goods and services, we are trading attention and engagement. And this can favor parties with resources, once they understand what kind of content sticks right, once they can also kind of mobilize, actually networks right. And this can include content creators such as podcasters and influencers to kind of also amplify their content. And I think this is one of the points I want to make right in response to Walid’s earlier point that social media favors the opposition, especially in the last few years, I actually think that the PAP is much more ready, right, to use social media.

Cherian George
And this, I think, actually, is a global misunderstanding and a global trend. Right? I think probably up till the early 2010s it was assumed that the internet was a great democratizer, but after that, we saw around the world that no, actually, autocrats are perfectly capable of harnessing the power of the net, yeah. And as you say, tend to have more resources than challenges the use of it, yeah. But I guess, just to nuance the argument a bit, it would be still correct to say that with social media or the internet in general, it is no longer possible for the government or any authoritarian state to shut out the opposition, yeah, so they can still at least have a foot in a way that they wouldn’t have.

Bertha Henson
Because I think what, what is, it’s not whether or not the social media favors the opposition. It’s just social media has given them the opportunity to be heard and to amplify whatever they say. And I know the the ruling party has the resources. No you see some of its Tiktok and whatever you know all coming out of our ears in front of our eyes, right? But I think people also know that these are orchestrated, scripted. To make look them familiar, right, relatable, right? I place more value in, you know, in the more free flow kind of discussions on social media. So podcasts, for example, I think at least you see them in an unscripted environment, they have to answer questions. I think some conviction, or less conviction or passion can come through. Now, the problem is we, we have to distinguish, know podcast and social media is a bit like the online version of rallies, you know. So, so basically, you can have a lot of reach, a big reach and a lot of likes doesn’t necessarily translate to anything on the ground. So we have to be careful, you know not to conflate the two. It’s just like rallies, right? And so basically, you are more or less speaking to the converted or speaking to the interested, but not necessarily speaking to the right audience, and the PAP I think realizes, you know, the PAP may say, have gotten on the social media game, but it’s only recently that they have come onto podcast. I mean, to be more remarkable that, you know, the Prime Minister sees it okay, and it has to make the time to go on the podcast on the last day of campaigning. Know. So we, we shows that they do have some they want to do something there. They know that it’s going to be bigger and bigger, right, but I don’t think as much effect.

Cherian George
Right? There are podcasts and there are podcasts, right? I think I’m not sure how well even someone like me who follows it, it is actually quite hard to understand that business models, the ethics and so on, right? Yeah, are some of them pay for play? In other words, you know, the news maker gets to actually dictate the content of the interview, and it’s actually paid or and favors or money is exchanged. Are there others that are actually behaving in a more journalistic way? And Natalie, do you have a sense of what the that landscape is.

Natalie Pang
Yeah, in fact, I feel that there are so many podcasts. I would call this a podcast selection, right? There have been so many podcasts. Somebody created a podcast tracker of all the podcasts that was going on. I tried to follow all of them. It was impossible. So I also think that maybe during this election, like I said, there are podcasts, and there are podcasts, right? And I kind of also think that maybe this election, it wasn’t just the podcast, it was also all the memes, all the sort of spectacle, in a way that was created. I do feel that voters are kind of distracted, right and, and also overwhelmed and, and they pay attention very much to those they have been actually following already, even before the election. So So I think this is also coming to my also. Other point is that social media is a long game. So for political parties, right? Very much like walking the ground is a long game. So for political parties, they got to understand that, or even just creating viral content actually does not really help. And and, yeah, for certain parties like the PAP, they have been actually playing this long game for quite a number of years, and so so that when it came to the election, actually mattered.

Bertha Henson
What about the role of mainstream media? Then, you know, I mean, we’re talking about.

Cherian George
Before we move on to just one more question to ask for to Natalie about social media. We often think about, we, we often have the impression, I guess correctly that that social media space and internet space in Singapore is over regulated, right? Because we see things like POFMA and so on. But isn’t it also the case that in some respects, it’s under regulated? Because, for example, we know that the state quite correctly.

Natalie Pang
Sorry, Cherian, you’re breaking up. I couldn’t hear your question.

Cherian George
In some senses, the internet space is under regulated. I’m wondering if you agree, because the state has said correctly. I think that there is a public interest in things like transparency, so we need to know if something is paid for or not right. We need to know who’s behind these things. We need to know more about algorithmic methods to manipulate public opinion and so on. Some of these regulations kick in only during the campaign period. The rest of the time they seem to be under regulated. Have you looked at other countries or other possibilities to make sure that our online space actually is better managed? Natalie.

Natalie Pang
Yah, so I think — yes. Can you hear me? Yeah, yes. Okay, yeah. So I That’s a great question. I think the elections advertising rules, right, they were amended to actually require content creators to actually declare something’s been paid for and all that. But one of the questions that actually kind of outstanding for me is also, what about content that’s been paid for and created way before the election? Yes, so yeah, that part is actually unclear to me in terms of what kind of disclosure, what kind of like, declarations are needed. And this seems like a huge that’s an outstanding question.

Cherian George
Sorry, it’s a huge loop, It’s a huge loophole, and it’s bound to favor parties with much more resources to to sort of carry out, you know, a years long campaign, as opposed to those who only have resources to to do it closer to elections?

Natalie Pang
Yeah, I think so. And it goes back to my earlier point about how resources matter, right? And parties with resources, they have the means to actually not just create content at scale, and it’s all kinds of content, right, not just podcast, and they also have the means to actually mobilize that such content across different networks,

Cherian George
Right? Okay, let me turn Bertha to your favorite topic, mainstream media. Yeah.

Bertha Henson
Oh, I just basically wanted to ask Natalie, if you know how she thinks the mainstream media role is, you know, compared to the social media side, you know, I think I’ve said before that I think the mainstream media looks like it’s best at collating facts and putting information out. Ah. So you want to know who’s questioning, who’s standing, where, who won, how much. They’re very good at it, because they have plenty, plenty, plenty of resources for that sort of thing. But I think what was sorely lacking this round was commentary and any analysis at all. And I don’t know, maybe I say I can, I can understand are the difficulties of doing something like that when you are mainstream here, and you have the government on your back, ah, so that let I mean, I know that, but there are some things which I think you can do professionally, like not just, not just repeat, ah, report and here, here is where I take issue of a lot of the reporting, because some things are not explained and some background is not given, and usually it’s those which are unfavorable to the PAP that is not given, you know. So the whole NTUC-Allianz thing, right? I mean, SM talked about, you know, voters, party and all that, he didn’t reckon that no social media will pick it up, do the check, check, hansard, put it out and say, This is why, whatever, you know, so they don’t seem to be doing that due diligence, like the master plans, you know. I think it’s perfectly disturbed for mainstream media to ask how much of this master plan is master State, and how much of it is Town Council, how much of it is CCC, you know. So it that kind of debt were not being given. So we are actually really very big slogans, and you have to take it in. No, I told podcasters that, you know, the day they can do that kind of thing, I’ll be very happy. You know that, you know, but they are, if they are going to stick to just views, just views, rather than anything more, you know, then, you know, they were just, they will just remain as you know. I mean, views are free. La, ah, opinions are free. But you know, if they could come down to that level of some kind of expertise, that will be very good for Singapore,

Cherian George
Because that, after all, is something nobody else can do. Right? Yes, they are getting a heck of lot of taxpayer money to maintain a very large army or full time professional journalists. So if they’re not actually spending the time to do the kind of actually quite basic background checking compilation, then who’s going to do it?

Bertha Henson
Exactly, you know, who’s going to do it, you know? I mean, basically, I read the whole report on the parliamentary report card, for example, right? That was done by CAPE, right? Volunteers, yeah, ah, volunteers, you know, it’s perfectly legitimate for the Straits Times to do it and do it a lot more comprehensively than what it did. And no, and so this means that, essentially, frankly, I think that if more of it came out, people be more aware of, you know, what is diversity, what is what are views, what is asking questions, you know, the parliamentary aspects of,

Cherian George
yeah, then you have Kirsten Han doing, again, something that correct? Yeah, they should have done, which is very deep comparison of the manifestos.

Bertha Henson
The thing is this, you see, social media must also ask this question. No, a lot of the PAP side is talking about talk, talk, talk. No action, no action, talk, to talk, you know, you know, basically you cannot dismiss talking as part of the political process. But you know that seems to be something that people resonate, you know, I mean, resonates with people. But you cannot do that. You must hear ideas, you know, and you know you you then test it out. But you must have ideas, so I don’t

Cherian George
You started out you prefaced your comment as a question with Natalie, although it’s actually yeah. So I just want to ask Natalie if you do have something to say.

Natalie Pang
Yes, yes, I do have something. Yes. Thanks. Bertha, that was great. And I think this is where we must actually really look closely at the relationship between social media and mainstream media. I think social media has that. I think we’ve talked about this before, has that potential to actually allow certain views to be heard, right? And like I said, political talk is incredibly important, and that’s really what I feel a podcast has been doing very some podcasts have been doing exceedingly well, but on social media, information often are distributed in the context of networks. Right algorithms help a little, right, so long as there’s enough people engaging with that content, but if mainstream media don’t pick it up, right, it rarely gets circulated beyond that particular network.

Cherian George
We will need to wrap up on media very soon, as I said with a heavy heart because Bertha and Natalie, you know how much I care about it, but I’m not going to let it go without making one point, which I think addresses a common comeback to critics like Bertha, which is that, oh, surely, the mainstream media has always been like this. You know, what are you complaining about, including back in the day when Bertha, you and I were in. So occasionally I tried to look back at the archives and look at how we used to do it and and I think we are right that there is a difference, right? So let me just show you the Straits Times page one the day after the last rallies. This was it main photo. PAP, above the fold, both stories, PAP, okay, and this is supposedly on cooling off day when you’re not supposed to try and influence it. Okay? So I thought, Okay, let me check maybe it was as bad before, right? So I looked up the equivalent date the morning after the last rallies in 2011. Yeah, apologies for the low res. I couldn’t go to the National Library to get the high res one. This is what it looked like 2011 Yeah, the last day, the last day. In fact, this is polling day. Yeah, a neutral headline telling the news, not just giving the PAP s point of view. Hot contest and key GRCs. Look at the main image again, the most newsy image they could project. George Yeo, Low Thia Kiang, face off Aljunied. I mean, the contrast is dramatic, right? This is what we got last week, this is what we got in 2011 Yeah. So I don’t think critics like Bertha, you know, is making it up, right, that something fundamentally wrong has happened, yeah. And if you want to know why it has happened, well, we can only speculate. But I should provide this additional background that this version of the Straits Times two editors ago, 2011 The editor was Han Fook Kwang, yeah, six months after this. And of course, 2011 was a disappointing election for the for the PAP. Six months after this, Han Fook Kwang lost his job. Yeah, and, and I think it is not unreasonable for any subsequent editor to think that, well, you know, that’s what’s going to happen to my career if I attempt a neutral newsy page one on the most crucial day of the campaign. Yeah, so let me just leave that there, and thank Natalie for spending time with us. Bertha, I’m going to say goodbye to you for a short while. Come back later, and I’m going to welcome our next two guests, Ian Chong, political scientist from NUS net four, and Imran Mohammad Taib, wonderful. You’re both here. Imran is a well known scholar and civil society organizer. He is I want to make sure that I get his he’s got so many credentials and pick the right one. Imran is founding director of dialog center limited, and he writes on issues of race and religion, particularly on issues affecting Malay society. And I think I want to start with you, Imran, because, and I’m glad I got you on, because, you know, Lawrence Wong, yesterday, in his press conference, actually devoted quite a bit of time to the issue of elections and race, politics and identity and so on. What is your take on that?

Imran Mohammad Taib
Yeah, thanks, Cherian. I think personally, we have to acknowledge that race still matters to many people on the ground. And if we think that race doesn’t matter, then probably we are living in our own bubble. And therefore the question of whether the system takes into consideration of this reality, as argued by some government leaders, or the system itself perpetuates or heightens the racialization might be moot at this stage. So to me, it’s not about bringing race into the picture, and throughout the election campaigning period, we saw how race was quite central, particularly in Tampines, right with memes of Faisal Manap versus Masagos. So it’s not about bringing race into the picture, but it’s how it’s being brought into the picture. And that’s the particular concern. We’ve seen, for example, during the campaigning period of the Malay ground calling for more Malay-Muslim voices to be heard to be represented in Parliament. And this somehow evokes the memory of the collective leadership saga also of the AMP convention some years ago.

Cherian George
This was in the early 1990s yeah?

Imran Mohammad Taib
Yeah, and up to 2000s actually. So I think we just have to acknowledge that race do matters to many people on the ground, but it’s how it’s being discussed. It’s how it’s being brought up. That’s where the concern is,

Cherian George
Right. Ian thoughts on this?

Chong Ja Ian
Right. Agree with Imran that race matters, but I guess I also agree that the way that race matters is and is discussed is important. The what I noticed from this election. I mean, it was even prior to election was I was looking at Alia Mattar’s campaign, so she was running in Punggol. Of course, she had talked about the the Educate, the Ministry of Education, module on on Palestine, and how it was unsatisfactorily done for her, and she wanted consent, which I thought was a pretty reasonable point. I mean, she also raised pointed for sexuality education in our schools. It’s it’s done with parental consent as well. Now the that was her point. But I think the media and also the public kept on trying to shoehorn her into this sort of single issue candidate, because she’s a Muslim woman, because she brought up Palestine. And also you get commentary like, oh, you know these Malay-Muslim people, they are just emotional. I mean, on some level, a lot this is the perpetuation bit, right? There’s a certain stereotype that people have in their minds that just gets reinforced. And this is where I think some of the way that we talk about race as seen to this election, can be done better. Because I think for Palestine, if you look at the protests, the very small scale protests, peaceful protests, that have happened around it, it’s not strictly a racial or religious it’s not anymore, right, a strictly racial religious thing. You see young people thinking that, you know, this is also a humanitarian issue. It’s an issue that it’s not okay that you have a civilians being bombed. It’s not okay that you have a state violating international law. And for Singapore, that for a country that talks a lot about international law, that should be pretty much par forthe course. So I think that race and all that is important, but it has this element that for you know people, they have an idea about how it ought to work, or how it ought to work in Singapore in the past, and that needs to be updated to some of those realities. So I thought that element was quite interesting is bit separate from the point that Imran brought up, right? Yeah, yeah,

Cherian George
Why I think this discussion is so valuable is that nuance tends to get lost in the heat of the hustings, right? So when issues like this are brought up in the elections. It tends to be dealt with in a very binary way. Yeah. And I think what listening to Imran and Ian, what strikes me is that both of you are right in different ways, yeah, about different things. So and they can be both right together. What I gather, I’m sure I’m over-summarising you Imran, is that there is reason to be concerned about the way race and religion are sometimes talked about among citizens, among within the Malay-Muslim community, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s that’s quite a big concern. But I think I equally can see Ian’s point that the way that, the way people respond to it, might unfairly stereotype Muslims, number one, right might, in fact, be politicizing the issue more than it needs to be number two, and worst of all, could actually be deliberately or as convenient byproduct, activating Islamophobia among non-Muslims who hear this talk about, oh, you know, here are Muslims getting worked up about this and that kind of frightens me. Yeah, I better go back to my safe ground. Yeah. And I think both of these things can be equally true. There could be a problem within the Muslim community, but there could equally be a problem with politicians making it to be a bigger issue than it is. Would it? Would I be right?

Chong Ja-Ian
I think you’re right. And I would want to add one more point. I mean, we can’t let a discussion about race and religion go on without the very unfortunate comments by Gigene Wong right towards Ariffin Sha, this on the SDP side. This is another element of what we’re talking about, you know, the sort of Islamophobia and the sort of stereotyping what we saw in Gigene Wong’s comments, was also that stereotyping, right? Um, that that there was a view that, okay, well, you sort of make fun of minorities and their names and all. It’s okay. It’s clearly not right. But that is something that, as a society, we need to work on. And I thought what was even more disheartening was when Ariffin was trying to discuss his experience, and then you had this heckler on the ground, which is was telling him to move on and to shut up, essentially, which I thought was also very, very unfortunate aspect of how race and religion comes up for I think the majority, sometimes it’s very easy, not just the nuance, but it’s very easy to just dismiss and think what minorities hold as important. Just think that, oh, well, doesn’t affect me, so it doesn’t matter this. This applies to whether it’s Muslims or or people of South Asian heritage, or any other minority. That is something that we seriously need to work on. It came up during COVID, and this is this sort of these episodes, are examples of them coming up again. And I think I suggest that it’s these are areas that we need to think more seriously about and treat more seriously, rather than to just sort of pretend that they don’t exist and to shun aside,

Cherian George
Right? Imran, I did see you post about, you know, in the in the heat of the exchange about Noor Deros, the sort of, I guess, radical feature who had been associated himself with WP and this attracted a lot of controversy, you said something about, well, you appreciated the WP leader, Pritam Singh, coming out to clarify, you would have welcomed an equally strong, visible response from Faisal Manap, could you elaborate?

Imran Mohammad Taib
Yeah, firstly, I must say that I’m quite invested in this, in the sense that I do know Noor Deros, as well as Zulfika, or shall we go by their moniker, Zainab personally. So there’s been a lot of exchanges in the past. So in that sense, I have perhaps information that maybe others may not have. But with reference to my posting, I think, firstly, you know when, when throughout the GE campaigning period, the framing of, you know, Malay-Muslim voice, to me, is very problematic in the sense that it tends to see the Malay Muslim voice as one monolithic and unified voice and and we saw how this was hoisted, then upon the shoulders of some of the Malay-Muslim opposition candidates, who perhaps have their own pet topics and worldview that may not be totally representative of the entire community too, and some of the issues that were brought up in Parliament by our Malay opposition leader may not also be representative of the entire voice of the community, so it’s only a segment of the community, and therefore we should not overhype this whole issue about Malay voice and representation of Malay voice, and this is the complexity that alluded to that cannot be reduced to this binary position. And let me add my discomfort here on this matter, when I saw some of my friends actually sharing Noor Deros and Zulfika’s posts, and I contacted some of them, and I asked, Do you know who these figures are and how they operated within the Malay-Muslim community, and they had no clue, and only on the surface level of what was the what was put up by the media. And yet they they carry and platform the messaging of this Malay-Muslim voice is to try to champion so it makes me question, whose voice are we referring to, and what impact will this voice have on the community? At the very least, find out the contestations in the community in terms of ideas, and be judicious when we want to actually raise Malay-Muslim voices at the national level, because some of these voices, voices may just be toxic, and we won’t know this until we get deeply involved in community issues and be exposed to the discourse within the Malay Muslim community itself, right.

Cherian George
You know, I, I myself, am not totally familiar, certainly with, not with the Noor Deros. I know Zulfikar’s background, of course, is the you know, and ISA target and so on. My as someone who has not followed these debates, yeah, within the Muslim community, for the way you have, I must say that the reason, the only reason why they suddenly surfaced into prominence over the last couple of months was because of the Calvin Cheng affair, right? So my reading of it is that if there’s a lesson to be learned, is that what you call toxic individuals, so people with more extreme views will take advantage of vacuum in dangerous ways, and then we’ve got to ask ourselves, how was that vacuum created? How was it possible? That these two individuals suddenly appeared as some of the most reasonable voices on this issue, other toxic views, but on this particular issue, on on Calvin Cheng’s, you know, outrageous hate speech. They were, in fact, the most reasonable, right, righteous, rightfully, outraged voices, and that was the reason I shared them on WhatsApp and so on. Yeah. I myself did, yeah. So isn’t the lesson that the so-called moderates, you know, including political leaders, should have been far swifter in expressing this deep sense of outrage. Quite you know, justified outrage at what was an atrocious breach of social norms. Yeah, they didn’t need two weeks to do the calculations about whether to respond. I mean, Lawrence Wong’s eventual response was correct, but why was it not made two weeks earlier? Yeah,

Imran Mohammad Taib
yeah. I mean, I fully agree with you, Cherian. I think there are several factors here. One is, I think there is a lack of public intellectuals within the Malay-Muslim community who actually raise issues, discuss issues on such matters. Why there isn’t many that something else to be discussed somewhere else. Secondly, I think we need to start having more platforms for discussion on public issues like this, instead of just having it closed door. And because when you have it closed door, then it’s open to selected few who tends to be there because they are somewhat representative of the community, and people who fell left out, then they need to carve out their own space, or they just go outside openly. I think we need to have more public engagement that is open, but at the same time, also, of course, we put in some safeguards that it doesn’t end up has an unproductive dialogue. So people actually need that, and because of the absence of it, especially at the height of Calvin Cheng saga, and including on Palestinian Palestine issue, people just simply pour their pent up frustration, and it just shows during the campaigning period,

Cherian George
Thank you so much. Well, Imran, one of the reasons why, you know, I was very keen to do this these two hours, is to introduce some of my friends whom I most deeply admire to a wider community. I mean, you of course, well known within some circles, not well known enough among other circles. So I hope that those who listening in will recognize Imran, as you know, a hugely important voice in civil society and national life, follow him on social media, etc, and continue to learn from individuals like you in between elections and not just pay attention during elections. So so thank you so much, Imran for for joining us and stay tuned while we continue to take this discussion in yet new directions. And for this, I’m going to welcome everyone else who’s in somewhere lurking that would be Kenneth, Paul Tan, Donal Low, Teo You Yenn and I hope I’ve not left out anyone, if I have left out anyone, and I didn’t mention the name, please.

So thanks, Imran. Okay, guys.

Chong Ja-Ian
Cherian before we go on, I just want to say something else about in response to what Imran had mentioned, I think it’s to understand what different communities in Singapore are saying and how the debates within them work is highly important. But in Singapore, we’re so cloistered. So I think if you’re not within the Malay Muslim community, you it’s hard to understand what’s going on. And I think that is a pretty serious issue that we need to grapple with. More generally,

Cherian George
I agree completely. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, so guys, you know I feel I should just take a back seat now and let you guys talk and moderate as little as possible. So the question is, yeah, so let’s start with some of the issues that we started out the election with, you know, thinking that these are key election, key election issues, and maybe were or weren’t. How about inequality, the cost of living, inequality and so on that all parties seem to agree that it’s an issue. In the end, cost of living was discussed. Inequality wasn’t really and of course, there’s no better person to pitch this question to than to Teo You Yen, fellow Academia, SG, editor sociologist at NTU, and author of “This is what inequality looks like”. You Yenn.

Teo You Yenn
Thank you, Cherian, and thanks everyone who spoke earlier. I learnt a lot in the past hour. So I think in many ways, inequality did get sustained airing, although I think, as Cherian and pointed out, in ways that are maybe not super direct, but I think it did get very sustained airing in quite a range of ways. And I think we can think of it both in terms of certain advances to the debate and certain limitations. It was really embedded within discussions that issues of issues that ordinary people care about. So cost of living, housing, retirement, adequacy, healthcare, even education. And opposition parties in particular, really highlighted that there is unevenness and there is unfairness in terms of people’s access to the things that they need. And I think in putting inequality within issues that a broad electorate is affected by and that a broad electorate cares about. We saw talk of inequality going beyond reference to poverty or reference to marginalization of only a minority group of people. So there was instead a really strong emphasis on the gap between a small minority elite class and a broad middle and working class, apart from highlighting class inequalities, if you will, there will also, especially in the party manifestos, references to the need to address inequalities that occur around other principles of division, such as gender, ethnicity and age. So I think we really saw that inequality was framed as a broad based problem for society, not so much a problem just for a limited group. And related to that, perhaps because inequality was discussed as a problem for a broad public, for everyone in society, there was also more explicit talk about the need for structural and systemic solutions, and here we see this really in the party manifestos especially, there were more proposals aimed at changing the rules of the game, not just at how to dish out more cards to groups with fewer cards. In fact, some opposition parties were quite explicit in critiquing the ruling PAP for approaching the problem with band aids or patches without stronger commitment to systemic change. And when I Excuse me, when I say that parties propose structural changes, changes to the rules of the game, what I mean is that they talk not only about how to address the immediate needs of specific groups. Well, of course, they did that as well. But I think they They also pointed out that, you know, the broader logics and principles that underpin how public resources are accumulated, how public resources are redistributed, these were also important. So, for example, we saw, you know, SDP proposed primary health care services to be paid through risk pooling system, suggesting a different model of distribution that’s more collectivist and universal, WP proposed women minimum wage. They also propose things like a standing committee to evaluate cost of living issues, suggesting that they think there needs to be a sustained consideration of how to deal with problems beyond what existing policy frameworks are doing. So I think the attention to structural changes and the first point I made about the embeddedness of inequality and broad public social issues are really related. It’s only when a problem is framed as one shared by a majority of the population that you can also follow with the argument that you know really big systemic changes are needed. I’ll stop there for now, because I think maybe Donald and Kenneth might want to jump in.

Cherian George
Yeah. I mean, I guess it’s a more open question. Is there a danger that the kinds of discussions that we’ve had, the kinds of reframing of issue, the look at structural changes and so on, will now just be swept under the carpet, because the election is interpreted as a resounding mandate, which basically could be read as a signal for business as usual,

You Yenn or Kenneth.

Kenneth Paul Tan
I’m not sure that it would be swept under the carpet. In fact, I think it would gain more salience, right? Because the sense of inequality in the way that You Yenn has presented it is not just a material condition right of not having access to things, you know, not being able to afford things in the same way that other people seem to be able to afford things, but also the sense of being treated unequally in the society based on who you are. Right is that the recognition. Of who you are as an individual, and that speaks, I think, very directly to a sense of dignity, respect, and that will kind of, you know, circulate in the everyday life experience of everyone. I don’t think these feelings of being this disrespected, disregarded, not listened to, suddenly disappears because the votes show these numbers, right? Votes are very crude measures of things. I want to add maybe a third, a third dimension of inequality, which I hope would disappear, is the one that I think may disappear. And it’s the sense of, how do I put it, the sense of political inequality, you know. And I thought that this time around, people would be much more sensitive to the unfairness of the political system, you know, yeah, we live in a democracy, you know. It’s produced these results. We respect the results, and we have to live by them. But you know, it’s not the fairest of democracies, right? And, you know, once we accept the results, we need to question the rules of the game, right? How they have been manipulated in certain ways. And we’ve talked about it in the last hour, things like political boundaries and electoral boundaries, GRCs, you know, the kind of politicization of the grassroots, media, access all these kinds of things that directly speak to just the completely unlevel playing field of politics. Here you you know, if you’re on the right side of the of the field, you don’t even have to do anything, you know gravity alone will give you all this the scores that you need, right? So I thought that this heightened sense that you know, the rules of the game are not fair, right, and the visibility of the unfairness of these rules would kind of really strike at one of the most foundational basis of moral intuition, which is, you know, we all don’t like cheating. We all seek fairness. In some ways, it’s really deep and intuitive and visceral. And to see it play out in this kind of way, I thought would trigger something a bit more political. But I think my sense is that this aspect of inequality, probably at this stage in our political development, probably only manifested at the level of affect. You know, we it felt like we were an affective public right, a group of people who felt aggrieved by a system that was so blatantly and egregiously redesigned, right, continually redesigned to favor one party over over the others, and the participation in this emotional outpouring, right, maybe didn’t translate into action. So the votes didn’t reflect that. But I do think that this broader sense of inequality, right is deep. It doesn’t disappear. And if it’s, if it’s kind of lurking and accumulating in a subterranean way, one day it will explode, and hopefully it explodes in positive direction, positive transformation.

Cherian George
Maybe I have a slightly more positive take on that, that it actually is palpable and has had an effect. But before that, I want to ask, but first of all, in case, I just assume everybody knows who’s Kenneth is? Kenneth is my colleague at Hong Kong Baptist University, where he’s a professor of media and politics. Donald Low another person who has found refuge in Hong Kong. Although I understand you are, are you in Taiwan? Now? I have no idea, but Donald is at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Donald, your thoughts?

Donald Low
To pick up on Kenneth’s point about and You Yenn’s point about political inequality. I think, as Kenneth pointed out, it’s institutionalized. I mean, people talk about gerrymandering and how it favors, obviously, the PAP. That’s true, but that misses the bigger picture, which is that the GRC system has created and institutionalized barriers to greater political participation and political competition, right? I mean, you look at, I mean, you showed statistics to show that in these elections, in the seats that the Workers Party contested, they actually won the majority of votes. When it comes to seats, they have only gotten 39% or 38% of the seats they contested, and that’s the result of the way the GRC is drawn in such a way that favors the ruling party. You know, you take it. You take, for example, Tampines. I’m pretty sure that the Worker’s Party won at least two, maybe three of the divisions. We don’t know that, but the PAP strong showing in, say, Baey Yam Keng’s division probably carried the PAP through. And likewise, in Punggol, it was soon, probably Sun Xue Ling’s strong showing in her division, that carried the rest of the PAP team. So I think what the GRC system, and we don’t mention this enough, is it has accentuated the already majoritarian aspects of this first past the post system, and people don’t pay enough attention to those institutional forms of inequality because they’ve been around for so long. It’s it’s accepted as background, right? This is it has become normalized, what someone called normalization of the deviant and and so we focus on the salient things, or like, how at each elections, boundaries are redrawn, but that’s really just focusing at the marginal tweaks in a fundamentally very unequal and institutionally unequal political system, right? So, so, so I agree with Cherian, actually, that these issues will be swept under the carpet because post elections, precisely because of how these deviant practices have become so normalized, not just institutionalized, there isn’t going to be enough political attention, energy, mobilized opposition and or even any sort of calls for the GRC system and for these institutional barriers to, political fairness, to be addressed. Right on You Yenn’s point, which I really appreciated, on how inequality in its various forms were expressed, even if the term inequality wasn’t explicitly mentioned. I can’t help but compare this with 2011 GE2011, when I think inequality was very explicitly mentioned, and there it was just not just inequality within Singapore, it’s also inequality between locals and foreigners. These issues didn’t get played up as much this time, even on cost of living, which was mentioned, you know, probably the most used phrase in this election was cost of living. I think it didn’t land as strongly as the opposition, or it would, partly because the PAP had already addressed, or sought to address this in 2023 and 2024 and of course, this year we’ve in year, with, you know, the various VCR right voucher, credits, and rebates. And I think the the PAP was quite effective on on neutralizing the anger and unhappiness over cost of living issues in a way that they hadn’t been as effective back in 2011 on neutralizing issues around foreign labor, housing prices and and, you know, general inadequacy of public goods provision.

Cherian George
Go back to Kenneth’s point about this kind of intuitive sense of injustice, the desire for fairness that we assume, you know, human beings all have. I actually think that it has been evident, and over the long term, the PAP has learned that there are some no go areas, right? So things that we used to think take for granted in the past, like, for example, trying to blackmail constituencies by telling them that the Constitution constituencies would, you know, go into the dumps and have fewer services and so on, if they went the vote of opposition, that you would repent and regret and so on. Notably absent this time around, yeah, there are things that the PAP used to say that it now knows will backfire. So, so it seems to me that they have picked up that there are, there is a line, you know, that Singaporeans do have the sense of basic fairness, that they’re going to react very badly if the PAP crosses, yeah. Related to that, one thing that I found notably absent when the PAP was dealing with the Worker’s Party was that they never questioned the WP’s credentials. Very interesting, right? They never questioned the most they could say was that, what did Lee Hsien Loong say? He said, don’t just judge them as individuals, judge them as a party, which was an implicit acknowledgement that as individuals, they’re pretty good. And I think they, even the PAP, knew that it would land badly if they made the kind of personal attacks that they used to in the past. So I mean that the electorate does, you know, has some…

Donald Low
It’s a very low bar.

Kenneth Paul Tan
Cherian, you’re being very generous. And in any case, that can be tactical, right? If you, if you if you ask, if you point to your opponent’s credentials, and those credentials happen to be better than your some of your own. That’s going to be a known goal, right,

Cherian George
We are at this stage where we are not sure what kind of lessons the PAP will draw from this, if any, right. Lawrence Wong explicitly promised to reflect and learn. He didn’t actually say what they will learn. I kind of agree with Donald that they probably will learn nothing about he need to open up politically. My guess is that, if they know what’s good for them, they will hear the grievances on the ground about more material things, and we can expect some changes in policy in the coming months. It would be foolish not to, it would be foolish for the PAP to go away with these headline, top line numbers that it’s a strong mandate. Because, the fact of the matter is that what this election showed, just like the last one, is that if the PAP is confronted with credible, high quality opposition, votes are basically split down the middle. Half of Singaporeans are willing to side with the opposition. That’s exactly what happened in WP contested wards. Is the PAP that dense to not pay attention to that? Donald? I’m not sure why I’m asking you.

Donald Low
Are they that dense? They are capable of being that dense. Whether or not they are going to be is a separate issue. I think on issues of redistributio they are headed, tentatively, gingerly, in that direction. We’re gonna have unemployment protection, or at least institutionalised guaranteed unemployment protection. It doesn’t go as far as some of the things the Worker’s Party or even Singapore Democratic Party has mentioned. You Yenn mentioned that SDP’s proposal in having a more collectivist universal approach to healthcare financing, I think the PAP won’t head in that direction. At most they will make verminor tweaks to health financing. If anything, just increasing government subvention rather than overhaul the health financing system. I do stand by what I said earlier, the issue that voters were concerned about, cost of living. I think the conclusion, or the takeaway for this election is that they feel that they have sufficiently addressed it. To the extent that it is a lingering issue, they will address it pretty much the same way, the VCR approach.

Cherian George
You Yenn what more could be done, if you think indeed they they are more sober in their assessment, and they realize that they are not actually won the debate.

Teo You Yenn
I’m I’m not sure that I would think about it only in terms of what the PAP or the government will do, because I’m not privy to the kinds of discussions that happen within those circles. I think, you know, thinking back on the nine days, I think part of, part of why these nine days get us also kind of interested and riled up and enthusiastic and also hopeful in many ways, is is partly because those of us who have been paying to social and political issues all year round have these nine days when you feel, Oh, other people also paying attention. How wonderful, you know. And I think that a lot of civil society groups or people in civil society, broadly speaking, right, academics, activists, artists, journalists, whatever, who are, who are doing the work year round, will have to continue doing the work of trying to in our own little spheres and whatever, trying to kind of further the debate and further the discussion and and keep people’s attention on it in various ways. I think, for the reasons that were mentioned earlier today, that attention is going to be quite difficult to sustain, right? So structurally we are, I think, pushing up against a lot of constraints, but I think if we can hold on to some of the attention that was indeed kind of riled up during this period, and hold on to some of the kind of shifts in language and discourse that that came up during this period, including by opposition parties who are very serious about challenging the status quo, serious about challenging, you know, some of the status quo values and principles underlying our society, not just the kind of surface level policies that, if we can keep doing that work, you know, then we can slowly, slowly chip away and kind of create changes in the directions we want to see them. So I don’t think of this as just, I mean, obviously what happens in Parliament and in politics capital P politics is super important and disproportionately impactful on our lives. But I think all of these other things that are happening outside of those spheres are also really important.

Cherian George
Yeah, I think this is a fascinating issue. Because, of course, historically, I think Singaporeans who want to see more social and political progress and so on have traditionally been, maybe torn, too strong a word, but they’ve been this option, right? Did you do it through political society or civil society? And ideally, of course, we want both. There have been seasons when the politics looks hopeless and we invest more in civil society. There have been other seasons when there seems to be the possibility of political breakthrough and people are willing to volunteer for parties, import parties, and so on. I remember, I mean, Kenneth, Ian Could, could you talk us through that relationship more between civil society and political society. Yeah, sure.

You want Ian Kenneth, please, yeah, sure.

Kenneth Paul Tan
I, I think I go back to a point that You Yenn made about the language that we have for understanding our condition. I think that relationship between political life or political institutions, civil society, which includes, I suppose, academics, civil society, activists, artists and so on, so forth, right? I think it’s the language that is importantly shaped in the relationship between the two, the language that we we use to make sense of of our condition, right? And for the longest time, that language has been somewhat controlled and narrowed, so that we only have one way of thinking about this right, and therefore one solution for dealing with it. So it’s not difficult therefore, to win the game, the political game, if you are proposing that one solution that’s on every every person’s mind, and then you show the technocratic ability to pursue it and to show results along the way, but with, I think, more energy flowing between and within civil society, political parties in reshaping this language that I think is a very significant change. So we have multiple ways now of thinking about what’s wrong here, and I suspect at one level, the PAP is probably quite convinced that it’s got the right solution for this problem, right? And that the task, the main task that they have going forward, is to treat this as a communication problem. To treat this as, how do you explain to people, right? That, although it may seem painful at this time, we’ve got your back, you know, you know, the use of care together and all this kind of language, right? And then to say, just, just hang on, right? And we got all the principles in place, and things will get better. I suspect they’re kind of, they’ll be more focused on how to get this communication going. But meanwhile, civil society, the young generation, who, you know, very, very thoughtful about these kinds of matters, are also evolving different vocabularies and different kind of frameworks for making sense of this. So I to me, you know, it’s a long game, right? So it’s the hearts and minds as well as just the political institutions and those kinds of changes. And I feel much more comforted in thinking that when change comes, the culture, the language, the hearts and minds are sort of ready, right? So that change doesn’t come, and then, you know, it happens in a uncompassionate way, or it happens in a way that’s not sustainable. So to me, when I look at this in the long term, you know, I’m optimistic about it.

Cherian George
I guess that reminds me also that of the fact that we may be overburdening, we’re putting too much on the shoulders of opposition parties, right? Because they can only go as far and as fast as the wider ecosystem allows. Yeah. And introduction to that, there’s a question from Yan Ying Sim that I wonder if Ian would like to reply. Ying Sim asks, is there anything that we as citizens or members of society can realistically do to push back against unfair election practices?

Chong Ja-Ian
So I guess where I begin is where Cherian left off. I mean, for democracy to work is actually, it’s pretty it’s actually pretty tiring. It doesn’t stop at the ballot box. Citizens, if you are to be active citizens, have a responsibility and a role to be educated about the political system and the politics and to exercise oversight and also to demand the changes that they want. Now, political parties are vehicles for this, but it doesn’t and they can never replace the sort of broader popular voice. That’s what democracies are about, right? Is that popular participation? What makes it tiring? It’s I understand that it is easy to try to delegate to somebody, and in Singapore, you know, we like to outsource a lot. You just think someone else will take care of it for you. But if you are invested in democracy, just doesn’t work that way. So to get back more directly to the question, then, if we believe that there are unfair, normalized practices, laws, etc, then it’s about trying to, A, get them changed, and B to figure out how to do. So it’s not just necessarily just being out there and making claims and demands in some places that will work, but in Singapore, perhaps we’re not at that stage yet. So I suppose one thing is to let other people understand why these things are important to evolve, what’s at stake here. So that gets back to an area where that’s close to my own heart. I think in Singapore, political education, media literacy, these kinds of things are not done as well as they should for a society that is as open and as advanced in many ways as we are. So if the idea is that there needs to be some reform. Then people need to be brought on board. They need to understand what can be done better, and that education about what our system looks like now, where it can go, what are the channels for affecting peaceful and more stable forms of change? That conversation needs to go on. It can’t just be a political party. Thing that that’s where civil society, and, more importantly, ordinary citizens, need to get involved. But that’s not something that we typically do in Singapore, right?

Cherian George
In fact, one thing that did strike me, you know, as someone who is more or less constantly tuned into politics, is how much, how many issues, perennial issues or problems that Donald described as structural, that you know, many people who only tune into elections suddenly say, Hey, how come like this? But Hello, where were you? Where have you been? Right? And the classic cases, of course, boundaries, right? I mean, it’s surely too late to complain about boundaries. When the report has come out, we need to look at the reform of the whole boundary drawing system starting tomorrow. Yeah, right, with worrying about unfairness in the media in a come on, one month before the elections is there is the wrong time to ask, you know, how come the Straits Times is like that? You know, right?

Chong Ja-Ian
I think the other thing that I struck me is how many people I meet just on the street are taken by the argument that, oh, the PAP’s mandate or mandate to rule is at stake when it actually isn’t just practically that wasn’t even on the table at all, but surprisingly, just talking to regular people when I was trying to, you know, buy by, oh, you know, I, I really don’t want the PAP government to not form. Like, that’s not even a practical possibility. But that shows a certain lack of understanding on a very general level about how a system works,

Cherian George
Which then allows this campaign to progress largely on, you know, leveraging on people’s ignorance of how it actually works. Yeah, uh, Donald, you are in Taiwan, which is, of course, a very different political climate and system. You spend time in Japan. Any thoughts on this wider political culture? I mean, let’s forget about comparing ourselves to the west, but even compared with our East Asian neighbors, you know, what is this cultural change that we need to see?

Donald Low
Taiwan or South Korea when they democratize? It was very sudden, right? Relatively sudden, but it was also peaceful, largely peaceful, but we have been able to portray those you know, that period of democratization as as unstable as as one where it led to a lot of destabilizing conflicts and paralyzing conflicts and and you know, you visit Taiwan or Japan or South Korea? Well, you see that, you know, they’re really matured as as as democracy, not that there is no corruption. It’s not that there isn’t abuses of power. It’s not that there isn’t institutionalized entrenchment of of the interests of the incumbent, but it’s certainly not done to the same degree or the same extent.

Cherian George
I think that’s where citizens citizens see their roles differently. Would that be correct to say?

Donald Low
I would say so, yeah, certainly citizens feel they have more voice, more agency. You know, protest, even in Hong Kong, right before COVID, we could see how protests were a legitimate expression of of opposition. The other thing, of course, when we talk about change, it’s not just external pressures and how citizens must get involved, how society must be better organized. Civil society must be better organized. We also need somebody in government who’s willing to champion those and push internally, those, those, those reforms, whether it’s political reforms or policy reforms of the sort that UN speaker. But I mean, after 2011 Don’t forget that. You know, there was a very important champion within the PAP, and there was the former deputy prime minister, now president, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, I just don’t see in the the PAP today, or the 4G that’s expected to take over the reins of fully, take over the reins of political power in Singapore after this election, I just don’t see anybody who has got that sort of credibility or even the conviction to to, you know, to push through on the policy reforms, much less the difficult political ones that you know that would require undoing a lot of the features that give the PAP structural advantages.

Cherian George
I mean, it’s a great segue to the final topic that we want to deal with in the last 15 minutes, for which I’m going to ask Bertha to join in again, as a close PAP watcher. I mean, we always known that this election is less about the size of the opposition, right? I’m speaking in global terms, right? I mean, what is it we’re talking about? Is it going to be 10 or 15 and it’s like, come on, the super majority was never at at risk and so on. It was always about what kind of political capital Lawrence Wong is going to emerge with out of this, yeah, political capital vis-a-vis his 4G colleagues since he wasn’t, in fact, the original first choice, and also political capital, vis-a-vis legacy politicians, those from 3G that some of whom continue to be in the cabinet. So what does this result do for for him? Bertha, do you want to start with you, and what should he do with this internal mandate?

Bertha Henson
you know, actually, I worry more about what he will do. Give what some people were saying earlier that, now that he has a strong mandate, then it’s all systems go. I can’t, you know, I, I sort of remember after 2015 it was a pretty strong mandate, wasn’t it, and all the fears, tough policies came through after that, and it just seemed as though it was really going great guns based on the idea that it has a very strong mandate. So I’m hoping this won’t, won’t come through. Now, the changes, you know, I think I’ve sort of given up la, ah, this whole thing about changing institutional that the institutions, I think I wrote in my book GE2020, I want some. I hope something will change. It doesn’t right, whether the EB on the EBRC, whether it’s on the GRC, the role of the PA, the only thing that was not done. That was done was POMFA wasn’t exercise. So, you know, that was, that was, Wow, that was quite something. So POFMA Wasn’t exercise. So I suppose we have to be grateful for small mercies, yeah, but other things, unless we people pick up the ball in between elections and run with you know, the need to change all these things, it’s not going to happen.

Cherian George
So you you feel that actually thinking about the dynamics or the balance of power within cabinet is really nobody that they’re all the same. I

Bertha Henson
Yeah, I beginning to think that they all quite vanilla. You know, all they all about taste the same. I don’t see, as I think Donald said that. I don’t see any other figure. The only one I can see who looks like he’s not really part of it is, oh, he come. He seems to have taken a bit of a off, gone off a bit in this campaign is Ong Ye Kung, right? He was very strong, fighting for his his his constituency for Poh Li San, and he tried to engage on health policy, and he’s the one who said that the SDP at least offered some policy alternatives.

Cherian George
I mean, I was listening very carefully to the concession and victory speeches last night. Workers Party being the people that they are consistently thanked on the PAP side it was patchy, right, yeah. Ong Ye Kung, gave very graciously, it’s either an extremely good actor or very, very sincere thanked his opponents. Grace Fu did? I didn’t follow all of them, but Lawrence Wong did not.

Bertha Henson
I was expecting him to. You know, in fact, he was trying to, like comfort the Workers Party by saying, Hey, hello, you’re, you’re still got la no peace and all that.

Cherian George
Where, after I intervened, you saw the error of your ways and you played. You know, that was the most you could do to be charitable, too, somewhat.

Bertha Henson
charity. But, you know, I wish somebody talk. He didn’t say anything about the loss of the NCMPs, the whole PSP is gone, you know. So that if he had said something, I would be quite happy, you know, because they did bring up as NCMP MPs, a great deal of stuff in Parliament. So, you know, if you want to have like, diverse parliamentary voices, you know that they tried to play that role, which is more than I can say for a lot of PAP back benchers,

Cherian George
Right? Uh, Ian, what? What hopes do you have? Or you know, what is possible in the dynamics, not only within cabinet, but the other factor is, for example, would could back benchers be given more room? Yeah, to express this diversity that Lawrence Wong says that he understands that Singaporeans want.

Chong Ja-Ian
I think one of the things that we tend to forget in Singapore is that MPs, they Yeah, they do constituency stuff, but they are also representatives that elected representatives, and they are representatives of a pluralistic and diverse society. When we look at the debates, you see different points being brought up, but at least in what, in terms of what is visible, we don’t see in any amendments. We don’t see what role these back benchers have to play in shaping legislation. Legislation looks very much like something that the for more for the most part, there have been some private member bills, but for the most part, you know, something that the that the cabinet sort of has, you know, pushed, and everyone else just sort of endorses, right? And it’s unclear, in that kind of a setting, how. How the diverse, diversity of voices have been represented. Yes, there are these closed door things that everyone talked about, but because they’re closed door, no one can see them being done, and no one, and therefore one knows whether they’re being done or not. So I suppose that’s one thing for Lawrence Wong to look at, right in terms of, you know, if he wants to bring the PAP forward to a different kind of politics, right? I mean

Cherian George
The past when they have acknowledged that, that there’s this appetite, and I start with this idea of a disequilibrium, right? I think, which is what I think is at the heart of the frustration among many Singaporeans, there’s a clear equilibrium, right, that between the at least 40% of Singaporeans, I would say, at minimum 40% of Singaporeans who believe that the PAP should not be as dominant as as it is, on the one hand, and the mere 10% of seats in parliament that are held by opposition. Yeah, it’s a stark gap, right? So in the past, the PAP, I think, acknowledge this gap and try to close it by increasing the number of NCMPS and NMPs and so on. Is there more that could be done along these kinds of lines?

Chong Ja-Ian
I think also, ultimately, it will have to come back to the reforms that we talk about, and there’s very little political will for it because NCMPs, yes, there’s a, basically a guaranteed 12 opposition seats in parliament. What does 12 opposition seats get you? It gets you more questions. It doesn’t mean that you get any change in legislation. There’s no sort of practical effect right, other than than more debate. So, so I think that bit needs to be looked at. But I will also the other point I wanted to say is when the last bit of the question you asked me in the beginning is where I thought that the PAP might go. I think the temptation of power is a great one. So as Bertha had mentioned in terms of 2015 I expect that there’ll be a lot of temptation to come down in ways that are hard on civil society and also on on the opposition parties. I think also, that alludes to some of the things that Lawrence Wong had said during the campaign about how he would not be able to govern if there were more opposition voices. Right? I mean, you’re, look, you’re the prime minister of overwhelming majority. One of the key questions there would be, how much are you to able to work across the political aisle, and work across the political aisle, not, you know, for anything else, but for the sake of Singaporeans that you are supposed to be representing. And I that’s one area where I will be watching, and I hope others do as well, to exercise our right of oversight as citizens.

Cherian George
Yeah, Bertha, please.

Bertha Henson
You know you were saying that what else can be done? I, you know, I think that more can be made of the parliamentary process. I mean, okay, it took them a damn long time to make Parliament go live. But, you know, there are committees in Parliament. These committees should, you know, be used as also a form of educating us about what MPs do. I mean, you know, you have the estimates committee, you’ve got the Public Accounts Committee, you have the wonderful Select Committee to select an NMPs. You know, everything they do is so opaque. So, you know, we don’t get any idea of what MPs do, except that they are very quiet in Parliament. No. So all these other things are avenues also to educate politically and to show that the back benchers are worth, are worth, you know, their money, so to speak. So that’s something immediately that can be done. I think Lawrence Wong said something about GPCs, right? I think you remember in the in the old days when only four, four opposition seats were won. I think the PAP back benches, they sort of went overboard. They became more opposition and opposition, but now they have really pull back all the way. You know, it’s like you don’t you’re so scared to rock the boat, you let all your leaders take the heat and, you know, do the fighting and all that and and that doesn’t say much about you know them as people who represent diverse voices.

Chong Ja-Ian
Just a quick point, that in other parliaments, usually the the standing committees on different issues, and they will scrutinize bills before they even go for first reading. We don’t have them single. Mm,

Cherian George
Hmm. What do you guys have been telling me about the way the PAP reacts to criticism, the way it’s these shadows when they’re numb, the way it is so easily threatened and of and how often this brings out the worst in them. You know, it reminds me of something I think Donald and I we we discussed when we were writing our book five years ago. PAP vs. PAP, that in many senses, the PAP is its own worst enemy. Right? Comment, the Donald

Donald Low
It’s own worst enemy, in a sense, and there’s a number of ways you saw that during the election campaign. I mean, first they go into the campaign saying, right fresh team? And they say, Yeah, look, we have got this 32 first time candidates, I challenge any member of on the panel name me five of the new fresh face candidates, first time candidates from the PAP right out of 32, 32 new candidates is more than the entire slate of Workers Party candidates. 26, I’m sure all of each and everyone else can name more than five, probably more than 10, you know, WP candidates. It just shows this is to Bertha’s point right, how they have backgrounded their new faces. You talk about renewal, you talk about fresh team. Where are they? Right? So that’s how, at a very basic level, they, you know, they are their own worst enemy in the sense that they they don’t portray or project the the sense of optimism renewal that they promise Singaporeans. And then over the course of the election campaign, you know, bringing rolling out these old timers from the 3G even from the 2G that is the worst possible message you can send to young voters, right? Is the message, not of, in looking forward, it is the, really the message of, you know, stick with the devil you know, rather than the devil you don’t know. And the worst thing, of course, is that, at least superficially, this, this strategy work. And so I think the even if on deep reflection, the PAP realizes that, hey, you know, there wasn’t really a big swing to us, right? The big swing is, you know, the high popular vote shares has been flattered by the hopelessness of these minor parties, right? That you know, by the way, the minor parties contested in 62 seats, the major opposition parties only contested in 50. So, so, so in their in their more serious moments, in their more thoughtful, reflective moments. The PAP might say, this is no, not a huge mandate, right, certainly not the landslide as as Cherian mentioned, but instinctively, I think that you know what Ian says our temptation to power and to exercise in it, in in in a forceful way that is very strong, right? So instinctively, emotionally, they want to flex, right? They’re not going to engage in that sort of thoughtful, deliberative process of involving people, bringing on board, trying to reflect the diversity of society, engaging in deep policy as well as institutional change. I just don’t see how it’s going to happen. I just don’t see how that that change is going to happen with with this, you know, super majority that they have and the kind of increase in popular mandate that they now have secured.

Cherian George
Kenneth and You Yenn, let’s close with you guys addressing the same question. I mean, it often strikes me that I mean, compared with most other countries, when they are really deep ideological differences between parties, most of our main parties are pretty centrist. You know, talking about center left, center right, or whatever, right? So there’s another sense in which I mean that the PAP is its own worst enemy, for imagining, for some reason, that, you know, giving in to quite modest requests for tweaks of its policies, whether it has to do with GST or cost of living, or, you know, structural inequality and so on. It’s it has a very dogmatic approach to giving in to these things, when it seems to be more of a mental block in itself than really something that would like drain our reserves or compromise Singapore’s economic competitiveness and so on. Do you get that sense? Kenneth first,

Kenneth Paul Tan
Yeah, I mean, two things, right? One is what you’re implying, I think, is inability to imagine alternatives to not just to give in to people’s demands, but also to imagine some bigger other ways of thinking about this and and doing it, and I think that that maybe is also indicated by the type of speeches we’re hearing which are kind of prayerfully cliched, you know, kind ofthoroughly unimaginative way of talking about condition today. And I think that that may indicate just how unable to to see the world differently the elite has become. So that’s, that’s one part of the problem. I think the other part is maybe the small p politics, the kind of, how do I ensure my hand is strengthened when I’m in power, and that, you know, I can keep the elite reasonably united and controllable. And, you know, those kinds of things right, because the other part of the story to do with a strong mandate is it also gives the party the luxury to fracture. You know you have not such a strong sense that you have to unite, because they’re barbarians at the gates, right? You now have the strength and within this, this luxurious position you can sort of, you know, then they were your internal egos and rivalries and all of this may, may, may play out even, even more so this kind of points towards an elite fracture, the old fashioned elite fracture idea, right? So if you know the other part is the small politics and the calculations about change in the context of, how do I maintain my control and power? In a post Lee Kuan Yew period.

Cherian George
Thanks so much. And finally, You Yenn.

Teo You Yenn
I wonder if I could answer your question by talking about the Worker’s Party instead by saying that, you know, I, I when I was watching this particular campaign and hearing the Worker’s Party, I think one thing that I really appreciated was that, although earlier I had said right that that they went at issues at that very concrete material level, but I also feel like they went at it at sort of of the level of values and logics. And this is something Kenneth pointed to as well. I think there are certain logics and values that permeate society when income and wealth inequality are very pronounced. And these are values around individualistic competition and jostling status hierarchies, differential worth, right? And I was very struck by several opposition parties, but perhaps Worker’s Party more than the others, pushing very directly and explicitly against these so, in their rallies, in their interviews, really references to, in some ways, counter values, respect and trust, community, interdependence, dignity, equal worth. Yeah? So it’s not just, it’s not just that, you know, we are absent of that, but also we represent this. And I think that that is what, that is what you know, we we need in in a society that is the kind of politics we need. Not just we are not that, but also this is what we are, right? And these are values that are, you know, have content. They’re positive values. There are values around which you are trying to rally people around, not just to repel people against. And I think that that is really important, and that is maybe, you know, if we think after every election, we should be thinking about next election, even those of us who are not you know in party politics, right that that that we should be thinking about what’s next and the work to be done between, I think those are the kinds of things that have the potential for people to coalesce around. You know that there are some deep critiques we should have about our society, deep critiques about values around competition, values around differential worth, right? And the then the counter to that, ah, sort of this, this attempt to bring back or bring bring to the forefront, yeah, more values that are about the greater good about, you know, how do we build a society for everybody? How do we build a better society around which people can feel we want to belong and we want to do our part.

Cherian George
Thank you. And I guess although this panel fair to say that we’re not holding our breaths for Lawrence Wong to to reflect and learn. You know, the these values. You know this is different way of imagining Singapore in theory it is possible it is within reach of Prime Minister with a strong mandate, government with a strong mandate to actually have the humility to learn some of this, even from the opposition. So with that, we have taken up our allotted two hours. It just leaves me to thank all our guests for spending time Walid, Bertha, Natalie, Imran, Ian, Kenneth, Donald and You Yenn, thank you to the audience for spending time with us as well. If you like this event, please sign up for our mailing list. We will be organizing a lot more the rest of the year and coming years, and we wish you all the best. Wish the 15th parliament, all the best two expectations are high. Use your power well. Thank you. Bye, bye.