WP organizing secretary Yaw Shin Leong revealed that he voted for MP Teo.
Thinking broadly, it might appear to be a good strategy by Yaw to explain his decision. In fact, it might not be something altogether new. Mr. Low Thia Khiang does vote with the government on issues in parliament, and he has mentioned repeatedly that the role of the opposition is to be a watch dog and not to be a mad dog that “opposes for opposing sake.”
However, could the issue of Yaw’s decision to reveal his voting choice be one of that of a absence of context to the public? Yaw’s vote for Teo is different from Low’s vote for a PAP introduced bill - the former could be seen as an electoral decision that encapsulates broad (if not vague) manifestos, while the latter is a specific bill for specific purposes.
Yet, some would argue in the context of the larger WP’s strategy, his vote makes sense because it contributes to the longstanding notion in recent years that the WP could move to the political center to try to capture the 10% swing vote that will propel WP to electoral victory. This is underpinned by the P-R that WP has done over the year, blending a fiery past which appeals to the liberal (think JBj and Francis Seow) and a semi-collaboration path with the PAP to appeal to the moderates and conservatives.
Yet, this decision by Yaw might prove ultimately to be divisive because the context is made unclear. Yaw chose to delink the notion that the sum of individual interests equals to national public interests. Rather, Yaw chose to argue that in the spirit of the limited public interests (as to that of Bukit Panjang), the PAP candidate was a better choice. By transcending partisanship (even though he calls himself a partisan), Yaw could have been trying to present himself along the general lines of the WP’s image - a party that is semi-collaborative to the ruling regime that focuses squarely and firmly on the policy issues.
The historical irony too might emerge in this debate. Did the PM not argue that people were voting for parties, rather than individual candidates after he was interviewed by reporters after the AMK GRC results were out? I am not sure the WP, or for that matter, SDP or SDA would disagree with the PM. Some political analysts disagreed, saying the people voted for individual candidates, which technically is not wrong either. This ambiguous relationship between voting for a party and for a local candidate has served Singapore political parties well. Yet in this incident, by not leaving room for the alternative, could Yaw be going against the nationalization of issues undertaken by Sylvia Lim (recall she said, this is not a local election, but a national one + the overall WP’s decision to have one stadium rally instead of SDA’s traditional strategies of having multiple venues)? Of course, Singaporeans’ memories are short, but the debate over whether one votes for a party or a candidate based on national or local issues would not go away, as long as we have elections in Singapore
Yet, how many Singaporeans would understand their contextualized strategies, and how explicit can the WP be without sounding too earnest? The reports of the mainstream press and the sammyboy forums could have work better in the realm of nuances, but the emotionality of the collective guilt and hopes of Singaporeans could not be helped by their descriptions. By purging the body politic of the greys, the purity of the alternative vision will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of our collective and instrumental past. Would Yaw become the ash ?
More interestingly,Yaw brings up the PAP’s dictonomy of pro versus anti-Singapore, that is the transcendental public interests (akin to the constitutional dilemmas of Modern China) matters more in politics. Politicking and partisanship should be limited in view of the wider interests of the imagined community. Is it a direct repudiation of the SDP’s strategy of community politicking in the forms of semi- demonstrations (versus the apparent neutrality and connotations of unity in the form of “walkabouts”)?
My sympathies lie more perhaps with Mr. Low and Miss Lim as well as PAP MP Teo. For Low and Lim, how to sound democratic, a little distancing from Yaw and still pursue this middle of road strategy in parliament in a big question in the coming days. For Teo, a WP’s vote may sound flattering, but his position with the PAP will change - either he will be lauded as the new moderate PAP or criticized internally as the new softies.
