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Abstract
The internet's public availability in Singapore has fostered a belief among opposition parties in the city-state that the internet will provide them with a new tool of external outreach to overcome local media bias and make electoral gains against the ruling People's Action Party. Ten years after the first opposition party went online, Singapore's opposition parties' online presence is small, its online external outreach weak and their electoral fortunes remain unchanged. Why is this so? This article argues that a do-it-yourself approach, technical challenges, a culture of caution and the parties' control over its members' online communications are the chief reasons why their use of the internet for external outreach has been less than optimal. The article concludes that the internet provides opposition parties an additional external outreach medium. However, that outreach has not helped improve their electoral success. This shows that relying on the internet does not yield electoral advantage.
Notes
Often, when confronted with studies that focus exclusively on opposition party politics, researchers would want such analysis to include civil society and the People's Action Party. This is not always a good option. This article's strength is in its special focus on opposition party websites and the politics behind them. There is very little research on opposition parties in Singapore because self-censorship and caution keep researchers away from this aspect of the city-state's politics. However, researchers interested in similar issues related to civil society may consult Gomez (Citation2006b).
Opposition parties were not the first to go online. The Young PAP (YPAP), the youth wing of the ruling People's Action Party, started its site in late 1994. Even the YPAP's rationale for its website was to use it for external outreach. Its then internet committee chairman, Harold Fock was quoted as saying that there were plans to report on PAP rallies, provide pictures and snippets of events (The Straits Times, 20 January 1996). The PAP itself went online in late 2001 (Gomez, Citation2002: 28). It has pictures and names of the Internet Sub-Committee of the Executive Committee (Kluver, Citation2004: 450). It has undergone at least one design change since its inception, to include a photo gallery and a search engine. It has one central email address, phone number and fax number on its “Contact Us” page, in addition to the names, addresses and branch chairpersons-cum-MPs of its various constituencies. It has links to the YPAP site and websites of the town councils under its jurisdiction, as well as its Women's Wing sub-site. The PAP also had a General Election 2001 sub-site where the Secretary-General's message, party manifesto and party political broadcast are published online in the four official languages of English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. In fact, the PAP does not need to use the website for these outreach purposes as they already have full access through the local mainstream media.
Following the 2006 general elections, the SDA had one member in parliament (Chiam See Tong of the SPP). In 2007, after the 2006 general elections, the NSP, the component party that fielded the largest number of electoral candidates, left the SDA (Chia and Kwek, Citation2007).
In January 2003 the SBA was merged with the Films and Publications Department and the Singapore Film Commission to form the Media Development Authority (MDA) to create a “consistent approach in developing and managing the different forms of media”.
Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam was the WP Member of Parliament from 1981 to 2001, and lost his parliamentary seat in July 2001, due to bankruptcy. The case stemmed from an incident in 1995 when a series of lawsuits were launched against him for an article in the WP newspaper (The Hammer) about an event called “Tamil Language Week.” Jeyaretnam was the editor of the paper where the article had claimed that five Indian PAP MPs had done nothing to promote the Tamil language. The lawsuits were brought by these PAP MPs and eleven members of the event's Organising Committee. Jeyaretnam paid damages in full to some of the plaintiffs, but was one day late with payment to eight members of the Organising Committee. After losing a number of appeals, Jeyaretnam was declared bankrupt and stripped of his seat in Parliament. In 2007, Jeyaretnam paid a final instalment and was discharged from bankruptcy.
Interview, Steve Chia, Singapore, 29 September 2005.
Interview, Steve Chia, Singapore, 29 September 2005.
Email interview, 15 October 2005.
Interview, Steve Chia, Singapore, 29 September 2005.
Interview, Yap Keng Ho, Singapore, 3 October 2005.
Think Centre, began as an internet-based human rights NGO in 1999. For more about the Think Centre, see Gomez (2002) and George (2005).
Email interview, Yaw Shin Leong, 13 October 2005.
Interview, Desmond Lim, Singapore, 28 September 2005.
Interview, Mohammed Rahizan, former Deputy Secretary-General, PKMS, 12 October 2005.
Email interview, Steve Chia, 15 October 2005.
Cheng was Think Centre's first webmaster and built the Centre's website. He is a self-taught internet programmer and designer and had, at various times, worked as a freelancer and attempted to set up his own company. He also developed some aspects of the PAP Youth Wing site, contributed to the websites of the now defunct Socratic Circle and other civil society organisations. Cheng is familiar with the various opposition parties and their web needs and has been willing to undertake web development assignments at fairly low costs. However, due to his freelance status, the need to juggle multiple projects and the low cost of his service, his projects for revamping the NSP and WP sites have seen delays and incompletion.
Email from Ape Communications Pte. Ltd, 13 September 2005.
Email from Innerval Design & Print, 20 September 2005).
Emails, Formul8 Pte. Ltd, 22 September 2005; Anhance Pte. Ltd, 23 September 2005.
Email from Michael Cheng, 26 September 2005.
Interview, Goh Meng Seng, former central executive council member, WP, 28 February 2007.
Interview, Melvin Tan, WP member, 23 October 2005.
Interview, Chee Siok Chin, SDP, Seoul, Korea, 19 November 2006.
Interview, Chee Siok Chin, SDP, Seoul, Korea, 19 November 2006.
This information is drawn from a range of interviews with the following journalists: P. N. Balji, Former Chief Editor, TODAY (7 December 2005); G. Sivakumaran, former Project Eyeball and Straits Times journalist (6 December 2006); and Ahmad Osman, former Straits Times journalist (2 March 2007).
Interviews, Sharon Vasoo, former Straits Times journalist, currently at TODAY, 7 December 2006; Lee Ching Wern, journalist, TODAY, 6 December 2006.