Post-political Elections: Opposition Party Rallies as Popular Mobilisations in Singapore

ABSTRACT

Although opposition parties in Singapore do not win a large share of votes in parliamentary elections, opposition rallies draw massive turnouts and vociferous expressions of support. Few analyses of Singapore’s elections have addressed the political significance of these popular mobilisations. This article brings the concept of post-politics to an analysis of the 2015 election, to develop an interpretive framework that accounts for the apparent paradox. I show, firstly, how elections are constructed by the PAP government as a post-political exercise, in which citizens’ practical interests in the efficient administration of their country should override any principled or ideological objections they have to the PAP’s mode of government and prompt them to return the ruling party to power. Through a reading of the opposition’s rally speeches, audience responses and interviews with party volunteers, I then show how opposition rallies create spaces where it becomes momentarily possible for citizens to publicly and performatively assert those aspects of their political subjectivity which this reductive construction of their vote elides. The concept of post-politics allows us to see how these officially sanctioned events become spaces that allow for the staging of popular political discontent, which the regular institutions of government do not permit.

Keywords:

• Post-politics
• election rallies
• authoritarian states
• Singapore

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the opposition party volunteers who were interviewed for this article, as well as colleagues who read and commented on earlier drafts. She is also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers, and the editors of this journal for their insightful suggestions.

Notes

1. While no official headcounts have been published, it is a widely known and discussed fact in Singapore that the WP’s and SDP’s rallies can attract crowds of many tens of thousands, while the PAP’s rally audiences generally number one to two thousand, at most. For a visual sense of the contrast, see Lim (2015). For a descriptive account of the opposition rallies’ atmosphere in the 2006 elections, see Lam (2007).

2. Complete recordings of the opposition parties’ 2015 rally speeches, including the ones cited in this article, are available through their respective Youtube channels, at https://www.youtube.com/user/wpsgp/videos (WP) and https://www.youtube.com/user/yourSDPorg (SDP).

3. On the contested history of Lee Kuan Yew’s role in Singapore’s development, see Ang (2019).

4. While a small number of Single Member Constituencies (SMCs) are consistently maintained, the greater part of the country is now organised into GRCs.

5. For further analyses of the effects of the GRC and Town Council schemes on Singapore’s elections, see Tan (2013) and Sun (2015).

6. While some argue that Internet-based communications have increased popular awareness, and hence, attendance at Singapore’s opposition rallies, awareness does not in itself account for the draw or significance of these events. On the role of Internet-based media in Singapore’s elections, see Portmann (2011) and Tan, Mahizhnan, & Ang (2016).

7. Abdullah (2019) suggests that the PAP itself takes a similarly pragmatic approach to designing its own policies; for example, determining its stance on homosexuality and Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual and Bisexual rights, not ideologically, but by what is most likely to appease as many voters as possible.

8. Chee is a long-time opposition leader, who in relation to his political activities, has previously been fired from his job as a university professor, charged with defamation by the PAP’s leaders, bankrupted, jailed and barred from running for election.

9. Significantly, while Singapore’s presidency is technically an elected position, Yacob was declared president-elect through a controversial constitutional amendment, which reserved the 2017 presidency for a Malay candidate; and a further decision by the Presidential Elections Committee that, of the three candidates who stood in 2017, only Yacob met the constitution’s criteria of eligibility.