83-06

Dear internet friends,

If you live outside Singapore, you may not have heard. Singapore went to the polls on Friday. For the first time since independance in 1965, all 89 seats were contested. Yay, every eligible voter gets to cast a vote! One time I lived in a constituency that had a walkover and I felt extremely pissed and left out.

Yesterday, the results of the polls showed the ruling party, PAP won by a landslide of nearly 70% of popular vote winning 83 seats. Not only did it manage to wrestle back one seat from the opposition, it also increased its votes in nearly all constituencies including the ones held by the opposition.

I believe most people are shocked by the results including the ruling party who must be kicking themselves for not fielding a much stronger team to re-capture Aljunied, a 5-seat constituency. The results showed the oppostion won Aljunied by a very scant margin of 50.95% versus 49.05%. That's just 2,612 votes. Hindsight...

In the days leading up to the polls, the rallies by the leading opposition party WP were very well attended. Since I'm pretty old and can remember the old days, this is always true of rallies by the leading opposition parties. The huge turnout at opposition rallies give people the impression the support for these parties is strong. But the attendance rarely translates to votes.

I'm so glad election is over and we can all get back to normal life. Will the ruling party revert back to its old arrogant ways with this resounding mandate? I hope not. Based on changes in policies in response to criticism and the number of times the words "humbled", "deeply humbled", "humbling" were used in the victory speeches, I believe PAP is changing with the times. Besides, we have social media now and we don't stand for that kind of nonsense anymore.

Read hubs' take on why pap won big here (if you care).