Opposing Power by Elvin Ong

Author:Elvin Ong [Ong, Elvin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL054000 POLITICAL SCIENCE / World / Asian, POL007000 POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Democracy, POL009000 POLITICAL SCIENCE / Comparative Politics
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2022-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

The Minor Opposition Parties—SPP, SDA, NSP, PKMS, RP, and SF

After Chiam See Tong joined SPP in 1996, he undertook systematic effort to try to expand the SPP by forming the Singapore Democratic Page 152 →Alliance (SDA) in 2001 (Loke 2019, chapter 15). The SDA was a coalition of parties that included the SPP, the National Solidarity Party (NSP), the Singapore Justice Party (SJP), and the Singapore Malay National Organization (PKMS). Of these parties, the NSP is the oldest, having been formed in March 1987. While the NSP has contested in every election since its formation, it has never won any electoral districts. Its best results came in the 2001 general elections, when it was part of the SDA coalition. The party’s secretary-general at that time, Steve Chia, became a non-constituency MP by virtue of losing his contest in Choa Chu Kang SMC by the smallest margin against the PAP.29 The SJP is effectively a shell party, free for any interested person to take over as an institutional vehicle to participate in elections. The PKMS was formed in 1961 originally as the Singapore branch of UMNO.30 After Singapore’s independence from Malaysia, the party rebranded itself as the PKMS, advocating for the rights of Malay-Muslims in Singapore. Over the decades, the party has struggled to attract members and stay relevant in Singapore’s valence- and personality-focused electoral environment. In 2010, PKMS’s party members were charged for rioting outside its headquarters in an intraparty struggle for leadership.31 In 2011, its president was arrested, charged, and jailed for possessing and storing contraband cigarettes at its party headquarters.32 As for the SPP, there is scant evidence that the party has developed any coherent party ideology or program. Instead, after Chiam suffered two debilitating strokes and a hip injury, the party passed the leadership baton to Jose Raymond in November 2019, who then quit the party in December 2020.

The other more recent minor opposition parties in Singapore are the Reform Party (RP) and the Singaporeans First Party (SF). Both were formed by opposition elites who had either joined other parties initially but fell out with the party leadership, or had gained some prominence on their own. Kenneth Jeyaretnam is the son of J. B. Jeyaretnam. The elder Jeyaretnam founded the RP in 2008 after he left the WP in 2001. His unfortunate passing just three months later saw his Cambridge-educated son, a hedge fund manager, take over the party’s leadership in 2009. The SF was set up by Tan Jee Say, a former senior civil servant in 2014, after he left the SDP to contest in the 2011 presidential elections. As a former principal private secretary to former prime minister Goh Chok Tong, Tan’s entry into opposition politics signaled a rare dissent and split from the country’s hitherto monolithic bureaucratic establishment. But SF’s antiforeigner rhetoric found little traction in local politics. Tan Jee Say dissolved the party in June 2020 and rejoined the SDP.

Table 6.2. Singapore’s Numerous Political Parties

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.