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Singapore POLITICAL PARTIES
In 1989 the government of Singapore had been led since
1959 by
one political party, the PAP, and one man, Prime Minister
Lee Kuan
Yew. In the 1988 parliamentary elections, opposition
candidates
challenged the ruling party in an unprecedented seventy
contests,
but the PAP still won eighty of the eighty-one seats in
Parliament
with 61.8 percent of the popular vote, 1 percent less than
in 1984,
and 14 percent less than in 1980.
The PAP was founded in 1954, and in the 1950s acted as
a leftwing party of trade unionists, whose leadership consisted
of
English-educated lawyers and journalists and
Chinese-educated and
pro-communist trade union leaders and educators. It won
control of
the government in the crucial 1959 election to the
Legislative
Assembly, which was the first election with a mass
electorate and
for an administration that had internal self-government
(defense
and foreign relations remained under British control). The
PAP
mobilized mass support, ran candidates in all fifty-one
constituencies, and won control of the government with
forty-three
of the fifty-one seats and 53 percent of the popular vote
(see People's Action Party
, ch. 1). After a bitter internal
struggle the
English-educated, more pragmatic wing of the party
triumphed over
the pro-communists in 1961 and went on to an unbroken
string of
electoral victories, winning all the seats in Parliament
in the
1968, 1972, 1976, and 1980 general elections.
With a single party and set of leaders ruling the
country for
thirty years, Singapore had what political scientists
called a
dominant party system or a hegemonic party system, similar
to that
of Japan or Mexico. There were regular elections and
opposition
parties and independent candidates contested the
elections, but
after the early 1960s the opposition had little chance of
replacing
the PAP, which regularly won 60 to 70 percent of the
popular vote.
The strongest opposition came from the left, with
union-based
parties appealing to unskilled and factory workers. In the
early
1960s, the union movement split between the leftist
Singapore
Association of Trade Unions and the National Trades Union
Congress
(NTUC), which was associated with Lee Kuan Yew's pragmatic
wing of
the PAP. In 1963 the Singapore Association of Trade Unions
was
banned and its leaders arrested as pro-communist
subversives. The
NTUC was controlled by the PAP and followed a
government-sponsored
program of "modern unionism," under which strikes were
unknown and
wages were, in practice, set by the government through the
National
Wages Council.
The dominance of the PAP rested on popular support won
by
economic growth and improved standards of living combined
with
unhesitating repression of opposition leaders, who were
regularly
arrested on charges of being communist agents or
sympathizers. In
the mid-1980s, eighteen other political parties were
registered,
although many of them were defunct, existed only on paper,
or were
the vehicles of single leaders. Much of the electoral
support for
opposition parties represented protest votes. Those voting
for
opposition candidates did not necessarily expect them to
win or
even wish to replace the PAP government. They used their
votes to
express displeasure with some or all PAP policies.
At the top of the PAP organization was the Central
Executive
Committee (CEC). In 1954 the PAP constitution provided for
a CEC of
twelve persons directly elected by party members at the
annual
general meeting. The CEC then elected its own chairman,
vice
chairman, secretary, assistant secretary, treasurer, and
assistant
treasurer. This practice continued until August 1957, when
six procommunist members of the party succeeded in being elected.
In 1958
the party revised its constitution to avoid a recurrence.
The
document called for CEC members to be elected at biennial
party
conferences by party cadre members, who in turn were
chosen by a
majority vote of the committee. The CEC was the most
important
party unit, with a membership overlapping the cabinet's.
The two
bodies were practically indistinguishable. Chairmanship of
the CEC
was a nominal post. Actual power rested in the hands of a
secretary
general, a post held by Lee Kuan Yew since the party's
founding. He
was assisted by a deputy secretary general who was charged
with
day-to-day party administration.
Subordinate to the CEC were the branches, basic party
units
established in all electoral constituencies. The branches
were
controlled by individual executive committees, chaired in
most
cases by the local delegate to Parliament. As a precaution
against
leftist infiltration, the CEC approved all committee
members before
they assumed their posts. One-half of the committee
members were
elected, and one-half nominated by the local chairman.
Branch
activities were monitored by the party's headquarters
through
monthly meetings between members of the party cadre and
the local
executive committee. The meetings provided a forum for
party
leaders to communicate policy to branch members and a
means to
maintain surveillance over local activities.
The party's cadre system was the key to maintaining
discipline
and authority within the party. Individual cadres were
selected by
the CEC on the basis of loyalty, anticommunist
indoctrination,
education, and political performance. Cadre members were
not easily
identified but were estimated to number no more than 2
percent of
the party's membership of 1989, a list of cadres had never
been
published.
Although clearly the dominant party, the PAP differed
from the
ruling parties of pure one-party states in two significant
ways.
Unlike the leaders of communist parties, the leaders of
the PAP
made no effort to draw the mass of the population into the
party or
party-led organizations or to replace community
organizations with
party structures. Singapore's leaders emphasized their
government
roles rather than their party ones, and party
organizations were
largely dormant, activated only for elections. Compulsory
voting
brought the electors to the polls, and the record of the
government
and the fragmented state of the opposition guaranteed
victory to
most if not all PAP candidates. In many general elections,
more
than half of the seats were uncontested, thus assuring the
election
of PAP candidates. The relatively weak party organization
was the
result of the decision of the leaders to use government
structures
and the network of ostensibly apolitical community
organizations to
achieve their ends. By the 1970s and 1980s, the leaders
had
confidence in the loyalty of the public service and had no
need for
a separate party organization to act as watchdog over the
bureaucracy. The government was quite successful at
co-opting
traditional community leaders into its system of advisory
boards,
committees, and councils, and felt no need to build a
distinct
organization of party activists to wrest power from
community
leaders. Second-echelon leaders were recruited through
appointment
and co-optation and were preferentially drawn from the
bureaucracy,
the professions, and private enterprises, typically
joining the PAP
only when nominated for a Parliamentary seat. The path to
Parliament and the cabinet did not run through
constituency party
branches or the PAP secretariat. In the view of the
leadership,
political parties were instruments used to win elections
and could
be dispensed with if there was little prospect of serious
electoral
competition.
Data as of December 1989
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