Wednesday, January 21, 2015

No Coalition

With the General Election (GE) likely to be held this year, many political parties are stepping up their profile in the public. Our Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong just had a long interview with some Singaporean journalists and the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) had actually had a GE campaign launch.

With such movement on the political front, some Singaporeans are wondering if it is possible for the opposition to improve on their performance in the last GE. The main questions are whether the opposition parties will work together to ward off the ruling People’s Action Party and if they will form an election coalition against the PAP?

I do think the opposition will come to an agreement to avoid 3-corner fights but an opposition coalition is in my view out of the question. Simply put; for there to be an “opposition coalition”, the Worker’s Party (WP) need to be in it and I just cannot see the WP joining the other opposition parties in a coalition.

To be fair, I totally understand why the WP would not want to join an opposition coalition. They are by far the biggest and most successful opposition party in Singapore. They are the only opposition party with a presence in Parliament and most of the other opposition parties have little to offer. So it makes no sense for them to join with the other opposition parties.

So Singaporeans can forget about an opposition coalition. Until the other opposition parties get stronger, that's just not going to happen. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

there's another possible 'coalition'. PAP gets, for example, 48% of the total votes, while the 4 other opposition parties get 32%, 10%, 7% and 3% respectively. PAP would need to get any one other party to lend it its votes to cross the 50% mark, thereby forming a coalition govt comprising the incumbent ruling party, and one other opposition party. In the above case, it would likely be the opp party with 3% of the votes.

Ghost said...

PAP don't need to get 50%. Seats matter a lot more than voting %. The other opposition parties don't need %, they need to prove they can win seats like the WP.