I wanted the WP to win in Aljunied, so I decided to keep any not entirely positive thoughts about them under wraps until after the elections. Here are some of them:

1. The obsession over Chen Show Mao’s academic credentials. Chen Show Mao was a prize catch for WP. One of the problems many upper middle class Chinese voters have with opposition party candidates is their lack of ‘quality’, by which they usually mean academic credentials. From my conversations with Aljunied voters, I suspect that this was a huge factor in their 10.8% increase in vote share, far more than the national average of 6%. The word ’scholar’ still carries a lot of heft with Chinese Singaporeans. While recognising Chen’s recruitment as a great tactical move, I was very uncomfortable with the way he was instantly accepted and idolised based on his academic credentials. I would have been less uncomfortable if the support for him was based on his skills as a top corporate lawyer, but the constant gushing about his academic credentials was off-putting. Off-putting, because the current PAP government is the result of blind idolisation of academic credentials. Do you really think that having all these ’scholars’ dominating the upper ranks in the civil service and the party ranks is a good thing? Finally, as someone rather familiar with academics, I know that academic achievements rarely track leadership skills. The hype about Chen Show Mao would have been acceptable if it had concentrated on his experience in corporate law, but the whole Harvard Stanford Oxford malarkey was stomach-churning.
2. Chen Show Mao’s prolonged absence from Singapore. I was surprised this didn’t turn out to be more of an issue. Perhaps the PAP folks didn’t want to associate themselves with LKY’s rude ‘go back to China’ comment. Perhaps they realised that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones — Janil Puthucheary arguably appearing to be ‘less of a Singaporean’ than Chen. But surely the fact that Chen was largely out of the country in the last twenty years, the years in which the PAP has been judged to have performed unsatisfactorily, is a relevant consideration. At least Puthucheary was around then. Yes I know Chen did his NS and Puthucheary didn’t, but it’s not obvious to me that someone who did NS and then left the country for decades is more ‘in touch’ with the ground than someone who has lived in the country for the last 10 years.
3. The WP’s policy orientation. I am much more of a fan of the SDP’s policy suggestions than of the WP’s. I’m ambivalent about redistributing income towards the poor. I think revamping the education system and preparing for a shift away from manufacturing are more important than giving handouts to those stuck in the low-wage manufacturing jobs. I am also not convinced that introducing a minimum wage would be helpful. In general, I am not convinced that the WP would necessarily have better solutions to our economic problems than the PAP does. But since the WP is not forming a government, this was not a factor that influenced my voting choice. It does, however, seem to be a relevant factor for many other voters, for reasons I don’t quite understand. Unlike many skeptics of opposition parties’ policy orientations, however, I do not think that ‘lack of substantive proposals’ is a legitimate criticism of the non-PAP parties in these elections. The PAP manifesto was anaemic compared to the other major parties’. You may disagree with what the non-PAP parties proposed, but at least they proposed something substantial. The PAP did not. Furthermore, in general it is difficult for the non-PAP parties to come up with detailed proposals because of the lack of transparency that the PAP perpetuates. Only the government has access to crucial figures like the cost price of building HDB flats. Commentators like Leong Sze Hian have sweated buckets trying to estimate what this is from the paltry figures that HDB provides. Without such crucial information, how are the non-PAP parties to formulate detailed proposals? Because of this, it is doubly damning that the PAP, with its access to such figures, provided far less substantive proposals than the other parties did. And because of this, I respect Low Thia Khiang for not wanting to put forward specific proposals for Aljunied until he’s had a look at the Town Council’s documents. Precisely because it is so difficult for non-PAP parties to be detailed in their policy proposals unless we have more transparency in government accounts, the call for transparency from the WP is more than mere rhetoric.

The last thing I have to say about the WP is positive. What has impressed me most about the WP, far more than this ‘Harvard Stanford Oxford’ business and their policy proposals, has been how well-run they are. Unlike all the other non-PAP parties, the WP has managed to create a party brand that is not centered around one charismatic personality. JBJ failed to do this. Chiam See Tong failed to do this. It remains to be seen if the SDP will succeed in doing this. The WP’s messaging was consistent and clear throughout the campaign, unlike the infighting we saw in the PAP. I would credit Low with this since he has been in a leadership role there for the longest time, but it’s possible that the rest of the party leadership played a large role as well. I find the efficiency with which the WP is run remarkable because we all know that the PAP relies heavily on quasi-political organisations like the PA and PCF to support its activities. Opposition parties not only have no such recourse, but are also deliberately obstructed in their attempts to serve their constituents, as Low Thia Khiang explained in a post-election interview video here. Non-PAP parties are also at a disadvantage in finding volunteers because the climate of fear holds back some supporters from stepping up. To get to the point where the party actually has a better communications strategy than the PAP, and where they are actually recruiting more credible candidates than the PAP can, thus speaks a lot for the organisational capabilities of the party’s leadership.