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The People’s Action Party, which has never been out of power, won yet again, but by a narrower margin than usual. The opposition had sought to deny it “a blank check.”
By Hannah Beech
Face-masked citizens lined up to vote in Singapore on Friday, with plenty of space separating them from each other. Their temperatures had been checked. Before receiving their ballots, they spritzed their hands with sanitizer, and many put on disposable gloves.
If any country could successfully carry out a general election during a global pandemic, it was surely Singapore, a rich, manicured city-state with a population that has largely been conditioned to follow the rules.
The winner was never in doubt, either, even though balloting was extended by two hours to accommodate the long lines.
But while victory went to the center-right People’s Action Party, which has held power longer than any other elected political party in the world, results released early Saturday showed a surprising slip in its support. Its share of the popular vote fell to 61 percent, a nearly nine-point swing from elections five years ago. The leading opposition party took a record 10 of Parliament’s 93 seats.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the 68-year-old son of the nation’s founding father, said he would stay at the helm until the coronavirus crisis passed, and he acknowledged his weakened mandate.
“The results reflect the pain and anxiety that Singaporeans feel in this crisis, the loss of income, the anxiety about jobs,” Mr. Lee said early Saturday morning.
If calling an election during a pandemic was meant to showcase the steady hand of a party that has used Singapore’s greatest strengths — deep coffers, technocratic professionalism and a belief in science and technology — to battle the coronavirus, the campaign also highlighted divisions in a society that, like many others in the developed world, is struggling with a changing geopolitical and economic landscape.
Several of the parliamentary races proved surprisingly competitive, and high-profile candidates from the governing party lost their contests. Besides adding four seats to its previous showing, the opposition Workers’ Party won more than 10 percent of the popular vote for the first time.
“Singapore rode the wave of globalization to great heights, but with Covid, we’re entering a period of deglobalization that leaves Singapore’s economy very vulnerable,” Bridget Welsh, a political scientist focused on Southeast Asia, said before the results were announced.
“From the outside, Singapore looks like a great success story and in many ways it is, but there are legitimate questions being raised about what it aspires to be in this new era,” Ms. Welsh added.
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