Singapore’s 2011 Election: Its Political Implications

The 2011 Singapore  election results was a sobering experience for the ruling People Action Party (PAP), the only Party in power since 1959 and one that Singapore’s populace have grown to equate with government, nationalism and Singapore. This reflection however is not concerned with a critical analysis of why the PAP lost its Group Constituency Representative (GRC) five seats, the ‘mistakes’ it made or why the Singapore electorate lost faith with their leaders. It is a broader conceptual contextualization of what the election results represent in a globalizing city. Given that the city-state has just gone through its best economic performance in 2010 (14.5 percent growth) and still economically sizzling in the first quarter of 2011 (8.3 percent growth rate), the PAP’s election results have called for political recalibration.

There are several ways of interpreting what global cities likeSingaporehave to handle with regard to domestic politics. Firstly, one has to accept that most cities are spatial and social traps. Citizens in cities develop often long residential comfort zones and networks, job security and social ties which embed them in residential areas and their urban settings.

Singaporemore than other cities is perhaps the penultimate spatial and social trap because as a city-state its citizens have less spatial mobility in the country – Singaporeans cannot pack up and move to other cities when the going gets difficult as Americans or Australians can do. This is compounded further when one realizes that nearly all of Singapore’s food, natural resources and energy are imported which makes its citizens vulnerable to changing global market forces.

Singaporeans are more territorially embedded since 90 percent of them own their homes. This immobility magnifies local political issues if the government chooses to neglect or ignore them. The opposition hammered home the realities of the high costs of living, unaffordable housing, transport problems, social injustice, the growing inequality of wealth and relative poverty that clearly resonated withSingapore’s middle income workers, aged residents and poorer citizens. In the latest 2011 global competitive rankings,Singaporehas fallen into third place behind theUSandHong Kongprincipally because of its high inflation and costs of living.

Younger Singaporeans, however, with greater academic qualifications and technical competence or talent, have the best mobility – the world is their oyster! When they are disgruntled and dissatisfied, they emigrate elsewhere.

Secondly, the tragedy of all global cities is that globalization and urbanization unfortunately can increase inequalities which in turn create pools of relative poverty. No city, no matter how wealthy can claim it does not have poor residents. The noted geographer, Doreen Massey shows even aWorldCity likeLondon has poor people. This widening of the income gap is a political issue in many World Cities (Tokyo,New York, andParis).

Poverty and poor people are relative issues and while Singaporeans on average are richer than most Southeast Asians, it does have poor citizens in comparison to its rich residents. For the ruling leadership this relatively poor group was belatedly acknowledged in the election as those people falling between the cracks. But compounding this relative poverty issue is the fact thatSingapore’s leadership has created a political system of elitism – the top echelons of government and private sector corporations remain highly paid and carry all the exclusive trappings of a highly stratified society.

The widening income gap and relative poverty has become politicized because the government has allowed knowledge based foreign workers to fill the ranks of the thousands of multinational and transnational corporations operating inSingapore. Equally, talented and educated Singaporeans have also risen in the income ladder but they have become a minority in the maze of foreign commercial corporations. Singaporeans that do not make the global city grade in professional expertise are thus seen to be left behind.

Thirdly, global cities are also cosmopolitan, with accepted pools of foreigners defining their global identity. No global and World City is culturally monolithic. In a way, being a global city means benchmarking with the best in order to complete.Singaporealone has 2,880 financial institutions which in 2010 managed assets of over US$1.1 trillion.

Singapore, with 5.1 million people, in 710 square kilometers, tapping into 2 percent of total global trade, needs to adapt and upgrade its labour force in order to sustain itself. The nature of all global cities is to compete by keeping options open, attracting talent and knowledge based workers, and expanding the pool of local educated people. Singaporeans want a Singaporean Singapore which requires political deft handling by any government sourcing for foreign expertise.

Fourthly, as a global city, the election threw up stark contrasts about the global-local nexus. Unfortunately global cities need to wade into international flows to maintain spatial networks and the heightened importance of ‘relational’ spaces and social systems. Yet, on the other hand, the government needs to monitor the local pulse to ensure it does not ignore grounded issues. The art of politics is the ability for government to fine tune a balance between global economic capture and domestic citizenry concerns. In short, there needs to be a morphing of cosmopolitan mindsets within embedded heartland aspirations.

If global cities are shibboleths for neo-liberalism and cosmopolitan values, then the Singaporean domestic politics of tomorrow must ensure the local politics of the ‘little people’ must remain in sync with Singapore’s wider international status as a place of quality living.