How to Vote

Yes - this is a “political” blog. But political not because it is cause- based, but because I want to discuss the nature and quality of politics in a democracy, a democracy some people would not consider a democracy – Singapore.

Despite the claims of many in the west saying that Singapore is a long way from democracy, Singapore is a democracy. We have free and fair elections; and we have the institutions of democracy, such as a separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judiciary.

What makes the difference is that Singapore is an illiberal democracy. That is, it’s a democracy, but not of the liberal type experienced in the US or the UK, which aren’t truly democratic also. The political thinker Robert Dahl stated that no country in the world is a true democracy.

Why does that happen? That’s because we have a political system known as the dominant one-party system. Not a one-party state like China, where only one party, the CCP, can exist. This means in Singapore opposition parties are allowed to exist and contest in elections, but only one party – the Peoples’ Action Party (PAP) – dominates the government.

But in recent years, we have experienced the sands shifting. The younger electorate has raised demands for a greater presence of opposition in parliament, and for more alternative views in parliament as well.

This post of mine aims not to support any particular party, but simply to illustrate the things to consider when a person votes in a general election. This can apply to any democracy in the world.

There are four facets, in my opinion, to consider in the process of voting. They are namely:

Background of candidates,
Their moral character,
Their policies,
The party they represent.

These facets have to be analysed carefully in the process of voting. Here I will discuss the accessibility of the general public to these, and how it in turn affects voting behavior.


Background of candidates
Background refers to the educational and occupational background of the candidates. In Singapore, everyone knows that the PAP has all the top talent. Senior bureaucrats, lawyers, prominent businessmen…
But that does not mean the opposition have no talent, however few in number they may be.

In a way, both ruling and opposition parties face problems in recruiting talent. For the PAP, it’s getting the right people for the top jobs, the people whom Lee Kuan Yew, now Minister Mentor and father of modern Singapore calls his “generals”, the “A team”, or the “300 who mattered”. It’s the difficulty in finding true statesmen able to lead government in the long run.

For opposition, it’s the sheer dearth of people they are facing, because in Singapore, very few people join opposition.

So how to choose? It’s actually quite simple. People do know about the candidates’ backgrounds. The parties make it clear in their party publications; “so-an-so was a lawyer for how many years…” accessibility to this information is easy.

But my advice is: first, look at the other factors, like those I will discuss later. Second, ignore the personal attacks some candidates make to other candidates. A truly mature electorate must not buy the story behind electoral tactics and partisan politics.


That brings me to my second topic on moral character. I have a personal preference for this point, because the lack of grassroots experience can be built up, knowledge of policies or issues can be grasped slowly, as long as the prospective MP is willing to learn and accept advice. But if the person has a flawed moral character, he/she can’t be really serving in the interests of the people.

But how would people know whether the candidate has what it takes?

In most elections, it’s only the first-and-last impression that mattered.
For example, you sit in a coffee-shop during the campaigning period for breakfast, they come to you, shake your hand, chit-chat with you, and tells you to vote for them before moving on to the next table.

How much can we know about the candidates, especially when the PAP has a practice of bringing in new people every single election?

Other than that first impression, we don’t have much to fall back on. But that’s not to say it’s not important. The first impression matters for people with strong Emotional Quotients (EQ). Sometimes, people know when they are sincere and when they are not. That’s because people can reveal their socio-cultural predispositions in that few seconds of conversation.


Policies. I must admit, this is not for the average man-in-the-street. Because to debate policy, you must understand it. If you don’t, you seem inadequate at best and ignorant at worst. In Singapore, we have a problematic situation of the PAP packaging and marketing the policy outlines so well people just buy them, and the opposition not debating on policy because… because… well, they don’t have a policy.

So policy is out of the electorate’s frame of mind for now. But I feel that the only way for Singapore to improve is to move into such issues. You see, Singapore has a unique political culture in which we don’t debate on issues. We debate on outcomes. That’s why candidates talk about lift-upgrading and things like that in elections, which sounds silly in a modern democracy, but that’s the language the man-in-the-street could understand. I hope as society progresses, we can move on to issues with a more discursive quality.

Anyway, personally I feel they shouldn’t make lift-upgrading an issue as well. It’s the right of every citizen to have access to infrastructure improvements, so why should it become a party issue?


Last but not least, the parties. All the major political parties in Singapore had had their proud history. There’s no need to over-emphasise PAP’s heritage, but parties like the Workers’ Party (WP), and the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) had their heydays too. WP broke the PAP’s monopoly in parliament in 1981, and SDP was the leading opposition party in the 1980s.

Of course, specific developments led these parties to go downhill, but the fact remains that we should respect all parties as institutions of democracy.

To sum up, these is a long way for Singapore politics. This is my take on political life in Singapore, from the perspective of a humble citizen with views of my own. Here I express my wishes for a bright political future for Singapore, where everyone can participate actively and contribute to the country. For now, we can start on learning once again, how to vote.