The farce of electoral boundary redrawing: A look at PAP’s self-serving practices

by Alexandar Chia

I was watching with interest, Education Minister Chan Chun Sing’s defense of the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) and election boundaries drawing system.

Firstly, as a point of note – in most parliamentary debates and/or questions on Prime Minister’s Office issues, especially on election related matters, Chan Chun Sing is always answering questions on these matters, regardless of whether the PMO is in his portfolio or not.

The question is, where is the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister or PMO minister like Indranee Rajah to take the hard questions?

Now, onto the main question: Is the EBRC and electoral boundary process apolitical?

A big hint to answer this question in itself is seen in Hansard records on debates in Parliament on Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs). The first is then-PM Goh Chok Tong’s opening speech, in the 1996 Constitution amendments to increase the size of GRCs to 6 seats.

This is what then-DPM Goh said –

“Bigger GRCs also put a premium on a strong anchor-man for the team of candidates standing there. Then whichever party wins, the GRC is better off with a strong anchor-man heading a strong team, and not just a glib talker supported by a group of straw men.”

We must not forget that in the debate in 1996, the memories of then-Solicitor General Francis Seow being a thorn poking the daylights out of the People’s Action Party (PAP) would still very much be fresh. As such, can it be unreasonable to say that Francis Seow and the near upset he caused in Eunos GRC in 1988, is not something the PAP nomenklatura had in mind, in part or in full, behind the 1996 Constitution amendments?

PAP statements, as recorded in the Hansard in the 1996 debate, further gave proof to how GRCs are political tools to serve PAP interests –

1) In then-PM Goh’s opening speech, he also made mention, by a not too subtle insinuation of how the purpose of large GRCs is to thwart the Opposition’s “by-election strategy” (the strategy of the Opposition in engineering walk-overs in a manner to return the PAP to power on Nomination Day, so that voters will not be concerned that the PAP will be voted out of power should an Opposition party be voted for) – this is seen in how then-PM Goh said that “larger GRCs” are for the purpose of centering the focus on the point-man, so that voting will be based on “trust” in the “point man”, in contrast to the Opposition’s “by-election strategy”.

2) Encik Mohamad Maidin BPM, who became a PAP parliamentary secretary after GE 1997, responded to then-SDP MP Cheo Chai Chen’s point, that these larger GRCs are to “consolidate PAP rule”, by asking “why can’t the PAP seek to consolidate their rule”. Knowing how tight the PAP is on Party discipline, if indeed there is no intention for these GRCs to be politicised tools, the PAP would have used its Party machinery to tell its members to keep their mouths shut on certain matters on the topic, and/or take pains to explain absent of political intent. That Maidin responded to Cheo, the way he did, and got promoted a few months later, is pretty telling.

3) Then-Singapore Democratic Party MP Chiam See Tong asked then-PM Goh, in the latter stages of the debate, if he (i.e. Goh) would announce where the SMCs will be at. Goh’s reply was, “it is a game of tennis and badminton, except that we do not know where the courts are at the moment. But once we tell you the venues, you will go there and the rules are fixed. They can play badminton and tennis once the venues are known, and whether it is hard court, grass court or clay court, once they are announced, you should be ready to play. I see no difficulties in that.”

Except that Goh should know that the type of court is not made known to the players at the 11th hour, as it would disadvantage them. That he intends to do so, indicates intent to politicise the GRC system, to at least disadvantage the Opposition.

Now, given how the 1996 Constitutional Amendment Bill is to expand the size of GRCs, can we say that by expanding the size of GRCs, electoral boundaries will not change?

And given the not-too subtle insinuations that the larger GRCs are aimed at Opposition strategy and to “consolidate PAP rule”, can we say that this drawing of electoral boundaries is apolitical, and designed to serve the interests of Singaporeans?

Especially so when most constituencies the PAP narrowly won in/vacated by an Opposition MP have been wiped out from the electoral map. Case in point: Radin Mas, Anson, Braddell Heights, Bukit Batok, Jalan Kayu, Eunos, and Cheng San, in the 1980s and 1990s, and at the turn of the Century. How was the Aljunied-Hougang ward transferred to then-PM Lee’s Ang Mo Kio GRC in 2011, and how did Fengshan and Joo Chiat SMCs vanish from the electoral map?

To further hit home the point that GRCs and electoral boundary drawing is not apolitical but an exercise in pro-PAP political partisanship.

In 2010, then-NCMP Sylvia Lim, in a Constitutional amendment debate, raised a point on how GRCs are politically partisan tools of the PAP by quoting Goh Chok Tong’s words that GRCs enable the PAP to recruit better, as GRCs give new PAP candidates the assurance of lower chances of being voted out.

Hansard records indicate that no PAP MP, especially Goh Chok Tong, who was listed as a voter on that Bill, rebutted Sylvia Lim’s point. The silence is telling. Again, GRCs can only function via the re-drawing of electoral boundaries. If GRCs are politicised, so will the drawing of electoral boundaries.

Lastly, if what Chan Chun Sing said is so, that the process of drawing electoral boundaries is “apolitical, serving the interests of Singaporeans”, the curious question would be, why is it the PAP government, so won’t issue POFMA correction directions, did not POFMA, this article by The Straits Times, that contained a suggestion by SMU professor Eugene Tan that 3-member GRCs should be featured again, “to reduce the losses should the PAP lose”?

If indeed this electoral boundaries process is as politically independent as the PAP asserts, then at least Tan should have gotten a swift rebuttal. But, the silence is telling.