ON THE evening of September 6th, thousands of people packed a scrubby field next to a housing estate in Simei, eastern Singapore, for a rally held by the Workers' Party (WP)—the largest of the nine opposition parties standing in the country's general election on September 11th. This was just one of many rallies in a week of frenzied campaigning leading up to elections. Elsewhere such voters might chant, wave flags and flog petitions in the hope that their party will govern their country. Attendees at Sunday's WP rally—and indeed the candidates they came to cheer—expressed a far more modest hope.
For good reason: the People’s Action Party (PAP) has ruled Singapore since its independence, in 1965. Discontent over immigration and worries over income inequality and the rising cost of living led PAP to suffer its worst showing ever in the last general election: still a tidy 60% of the vote. That gave the party 93% of parliamentary seats, or 81 of a total of 87; the WP won five of the remaining six. The Electoral Boundaries Review Committee, which draws constituency boundaries before each election, is convened by the prime minister, Lee Hsien...Continue reading
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