Making Sens - A tale of two political contests

ON Sept 12, Singaporeans gave the People's Action Party (PAP) victory in 83 out of 89 seats contested and a hefty 69.86% of the votes compared with the dismal 60% in the 2011 poll.
Two days later, in a lightning-quick party caucus, millionaire Malcolm Turnbull displaced Tony Abbott as leader of the Liberal Party. As the Liberal Party is the senior partner in the governing coalition, Turnbull's victory made him Australia's prime minister.
While general elections are a good indicator of a democracy, a better hallmark is the ability to replace a country's leader – whether at the end of the electoral mandate or mid-term – without a super-herculean effort.
Critics may claim the PAP's unexpected gain in the popular votes was largely due to re-delineating single-member constituencies (SMCs) and group representation constituencies (GRCs).
However, the 10-percentage point jump is too large to be explained by redrawing electoral boundaries.
Admittedly, two SMCs of Joo Chiat and Whampoa were merged with other constituencies while three new SMCs were carved out of existing wards.
In 2011, PAP's Charles Chong won Joo Chiat by a wafer-thin margin of 2.04% against the Workers' Party nominee Yee Jenn Jong.
Notably, the electoral boundaries in the Workers' Party's SMCs of Hougang and Punggol East were left unchanged.
Moreover, one PAP-held GRC was broken up and redistributed to other areas, two new GRCs were created while three five-member GRCs were slimmed down to become four-member wards.
For the first time since independence 50 years ago, opposition parties ensured all seats were contested.
While this was a singular achievement, the opposition parties were guilty of over-reach. Against a backdrop of a challenging global economy, opposition parties' underestimated voter preference for the PAP's tested leaders.
Particularly unhelpful to the Opposition was the continuing spotlight on the Workers' Party's failure to comply with mandated requirements in running the Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol East Town Council.
One significant outcome of Singapore's election is Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam's emergence as a strong contender to succeed Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong who has indicated he could step down in 2020.
At the hustings, Shanmugaratnam acknowledged the need for a change in the top-down leadership style and reiterated "strong leadership is listening, engaging, moving with people" – a stance that helped him secure almost 80% of the votes.
Will the PAP have the political courage to nominate an ethnic Indian to become prime minister of an overwhelmingly-Chinese Singapore?
In May 2011, Shanmugaratnam's top-notch academic qualifications as well as experience in monetary and fiscal issues made him one of several contenders to succeed Dominque Strauss-Kahn who resigned as the International Monetary Fund's managing director in the wake of a sex scandal.
That Shanmugaratnam has the capability to head the IMF while denying him the opportunity to become Singapore's prime minister could prompt accusations the PAP's oft-touted espousal of meritocracy is a sham.
In Australia, after being ousted in a party coup, Tony Abbott complained about the "revolving-door" prime ministership. Successor Turnbull is the sixth prime minister in eight years.
In 2010, then Labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was overthrown in a party coup. Ironically, his successor Julia Gillard was replaced by Rudd also in a party putsch in 2013. In the general election held that year, Rudd lost to Abbott.
Arguably, Australia's constantly re-shuffling of prime ministers is due to the maximum three-year tenure that occupants of The Lodge in Canberra enjoy.
Instead of the more common five-year term of office, a shorter tenure prompts political parties in Australia and elsewhere to panic at signs of a leader's continuing unpopularity in opinion polls.
In November 1990, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher won the first ballot in the Conservative Party while challenger and former defence minister Michael Heseltine secured the support of 152 members of Parliament out of a total of 372.
Advised she was likely to lose the second ballot, Thatcher declined to contest the next round and resigned as prime minister after occupying 10 Downing Street for 11 years.
Although widely lauded for UK's victory in the Falklands, the trigger for Thatcher's exit was introducing the much hated poll tax (later scrapped) and the perception she was increasingly out of touch with the British electorate.
As Singapore's general election shows, Lee Hsien Loong is an excellent example of a leader who changed tack in response to the PAP garnering its lowest share of the popular vote in the 2011 general election.
In contrast, Abbott is a textbook case of a prime minister who failed to address widespread discontent over his divisive leadership and anaemic handling of an economy battered by the collapse of the commodity boom.
In February this year, Liberal MPs voted against holding a leadership contest and gave Abbott the six-month grace that he asked for. Abbot's ouster seven months later was an event waiting to happen.
Opinions expressed in this article are the personal views of the writer and should not be attributed to any organisation she is connected with. She can be contacted at siokchoo@thesundaily.com