Eric Tan stood for the Workers' Party in East Coast GRC at the 2006 and 2011GEs and
served for a number of years as WP’s Treasurer. Eric was previously, and at the
date of our interview, a member of WP’s Central Executive Council (CEC). He
resigned the party, to the complete shock of informed commentators, shortly after
the (7 May) 2011GE because his party chose not to award him the NCMP position
in parliament (for “best losing effort”). Although he led the best performing
opposition losing team, the party opted for renewal by selecting the much
younger Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song, who was at the time aged 34. Mr Tan’s departure was a major loss for the WP
because he was a calm seasoned campaigner and one of the few older people who
had contested for the WP at both the 2006 and 2011GEs. Furthermore, his banking
industry experience had given him the technical skills and expertise necessary
to function effectively as a finance minister in government or as a shadow
finance minister in opposition. Despite being such a serious loss for the WP
his departure went largely unacknowledged and was basically shrugged off by the
party like water off a duck’s back.
Mr Tan graduated from the elite National University
of Singapore (NUS); completed compulsory National Service; and worked with the
Defence Ministry (MINDEF). At this point he was still regarded as an
“Establishment figure” and he viewed himself in the same way (source: interview
with Eric Tan, 3 March 2010). At MINDEF Mr Tan said that he first became aware
of the elitist meritocracy run by the PAP government (Barr, 2009; Barr and
Skrbis, 2008) and he became increasingly disillusioned with the ruling party.
Mr
Tan expressed his unhappiness about the government’s harsh treatment of opposition
politicians and alleged dissidents especially in relation to JBJ and the
so-called Operation Spectrum aka the “Marxist
conspiracy” of 1987-88. He was also unhappy about the cost-of-living pressures
that became more and more acute and damaging during the “Goh Chok Tong years” (i.e.
during the years of the prime-ministership of Goh Chok Tong, 1990-2004). The NSP’s
Goh Meng Seng agreed (personal interview, 15 October 2010), claiming that Goh
Chok Tong’s gentle manner, as compared to LKY’s abruptness and occasional impoliteness,
in fact meant swallowing a “sweet pill” as the government used more and more
tricky hyper-capitalist methods such as Certificate of Entitlement (COE); Goods
and Services Tax (GST); and Area Licensing Scheme (ALS) (now replaced by Electronic
Road Pricing (ERP)) to engineer society and extract increased rents from the
working-class.
In
sharp contrast to the SDP, which went into a period of relative decline after
losing its three seats in 1997, the WP, after contesting only a few seats in
the 1990s, raised its profile considerably at the 2006GE by contesting many
seats and polling consistently well (without adding to its one elected seat).
At the 2006GE, WP contested the following seven constituencies: Ang Mo Kio GRC;
Aljunied GRC; East Coast GRC; Nee Soon East SMC; Nee Soon Central SMC; Joo
Chiat SMC; and Hougang SMC; up from contesting only two SMCs in 2001. The WP wisely
decided in 2006 and afterwards to focus its attention on contesting seats in
the north-eastern part of the island, a region fast emerging as its “natural
constituency” or its “heartland” (source: interview with Yaw Shin Leong, 5
October 2011).
The
period 2006-13 was important in opposition history because it was the period
when the WP became the first ever opposition party to gain a significant
brand-factor meaning that a candidate having the WP-brand backing in itself was able to make a significant
difference in terms of the votes polled. The SDP had begun this trend, on a
smaller and less reliable scale, at the 1991GE when it won three seats (only to
lose them all at the 1997GE when Chiam defected to the SPP and the others lost
at the ballot box).
Mr
Tan described the 2006 campaign at East Coast GRC for WP as follows:
“In 2006 everyone had low expectations of the opposition
given all the mess. WP could capture imagination; twenty candidates, well
scrubbed, like PAP people. I contested East Coast GRC 2006. I left banking two
and a half years ago. Employers are not comfortable if you join in opposition
politics. ... Now I’m director of an educational institute identifying good
people to join University of Michigan. In 2006 WP rose from the ashes. I worked
hard to get elected, like it was a full-time job. The GRC campaign centred
around [sic] James Gomez. He said he
submitted his [minority certification] form, the Elections Department could not
find it; CCTV said he put them in an envelope [instead of submitting it]. They
said he had evil intent. PAP could not prove; he said it was an honest mistake;
this brought fear factor back. 2001 [actually 1991] they went after Jufrie
[Mahmood]; they said he is trying to stir up racial feelings. In ‘06 they
picked on James”.
Mr Tan stressed that the WP’s leadership
consciously chose to exercise restraint after being criticized by PAP over the “James
Gomez affair” where the WP’s Gomez was accused of being deceitful by claiming
that he had submitted his minority race certificate to the Elections Department
when there was no official record of its receipt. WP’s restrained approach was
important so as to give PAP politicians and MSM journalists no further quotes
to use as ammunition. The degree of restraint shown by WP’s leadership clearly impressed
many people, and it is one major factor explaining WP’s electoral success in
2006 as well as the high regard in which the public held the party up until at
least around 2013. Despite this, Gomez (personal interview, 10 January 2011)
stated that, if he had been in WP’s leadership, he would have handled the
affair differently. Basically, the PAP’s attempt to gain political mileage from
the “Gomez affair” rebounded on itself. Patrick Lee (personal interview, 12
October 2010) told one PAP MP that its harsh politicization of the Gomez affair
was, in his opinion, the primary reason why WP polled over 40% of the vote in
Aljunied GRC. Mr Tan discussed the WP’s careful and restrained response to the
Gomez affair as follows:
“We were disciplined; we stuck together. Low and
Sylvia [Lim, Party Chairperson] handled it; press wants to draw you away from party
line. Always there is a defamation threat if you call me [i.e. anyone] a liar.
We all stayed together; we said WP will stay disciplined; we concentrated on
campaigning; we had different policies; campaign went like a pendulum; we felt
the pressure”.
The
WP gallantly took on the PAP team in Ang Mo Kio GRC in 2006, a contest that
looked unwinnable because of PM Lee Hsien Loong’s presence heading the Ang Mo
Kio PAP team. Because WP had chosen to contest the PM’s GRC, the media coined
the label “Suicide Squad” (敢死队) to refer to the young
six-member WP team. However, contesting Ang Mo Kio GRC actually made sound
strategic sense since it is an area with a large ethnic Chinese population
(that is far above the national average) and it geographically borders the Hougang
SMC already held by the WP. It also includes part of the former Cheng San GRC
contested by the WP team that included JBJ and Tang Liang Hong at the 1997GE, a
team which performed extremely creditably ending up with 45.18% of the vote
(44,132 out of 97,685 valid votes) (da Cunha, 1997, p. 131). Although the MSM happily
reported the swing towards PM Lee in Ang Mo Kio GRC at the 2011GE (Lee, 2011),
insufficient attention was paid to the fact that Lee contested against a strong
WP team in 2006 but against a relatively weak and unpopular Reform Party (RP)
team in 2011. The media in 2006 also referred to the WP’s “A-Team” (Aljunied
GRC including lawyer Lim and researcher Gomez) and “B-Team” (East Coast GRC)
although Mr Tan said that he did not like to put one team above the other.
At the 2006GE the
WP polled very well in a number of seats including 33.9% against PM Lee’s team
in Ang Mo Kio GRC (Lee, 2011). Significantly, Low’s share of the vote increased
more than marginally in Hougang SMC from 54.98% (or 12,070 out of 21,952 valid
votes) to 62.74% (or 13,989 out of 22,297 valid votes). It appears that the younger
voters who came of age in time for the 2006GE were equally, if not more,
impressed by Mr Low than the senior and middle generations. Overall, WP’s performances
at the 2006 GE were as follows: Aljunied GRC 43.91% (58,593 out of 133,436
valid votes); Ang Mo Kio GRC 33.86% (49,479 out of 146,115); East Coast GRC
36.14% (37,873 out of 104,804); Nee Soon East SMC 31.28% (9,535 out of 30,484);
Nee Soon Central SMC 34.63% (7,529 out of 21,740); Joo Chiat SMC 34.99% (6,580
out of 18,806); and Hougang SMC 62.74% (13,989 out of 22,297) (all calculations
made by the researcher based on raw data at Singapore-elections.com). The sheer
consistency of these results (by the standards of the day) reflected very well
on the resurgent WP and showed that the party had built itself a hardcore
supporter base of around 30-35% (rather than the historic 20% of “donkey” hardcore
opposition voters referred to by Dr Leong). The WP was able to build upon these
results at the 2011GE, with the party attracting both more committed hardcore support
and more swinging voter support.
Mr Tan presented
WP as a party intending to focus on bread-and-butter issues with little desire
to broadcast its belief in so-called “abstract” concepts such as democracy and human
rights. This is where WP’s approach (in the era of Low Thia Khiang as
Secretary-General) differed significantly from that of SDP under Dr Chee. NGO activist Roderick Chia (personal interview,
4 March 2010), who assisted the WP team in Aljunied GRC at the 2006GE, put
forward to the researcher a similar dichotomy. Although SDP’s Chee has covered
in detail in his various books specific practical policy recommendations
(further refined, as far as economic policy goes, in the 2010 SDP document It’s about you: Prosperity and Progress for
every Singaporean), most or even all of these appeared to follow, more or
less directly, from his personal humanitarian liberal-democratic beliefs.
Although this may have begun to change, since around the time of the 2011GE,
key commentators of the era perceived that the SDP then saw itself in the
somewhat Gandhian or Mandelian terms of “light in the darkness” or “voice in
the wilderness” (to quote Mr Tan). Whilst the Gandhianism and Mandelaism might
have inspired many SDP members and supporters, Mr Tan argued that they did not
gel with the Singapore reality nor did they resonate with socially and
politically conservative voters. News reports of SDP’s strategic civil
disobedience were especially badly received by this large segment of the voting
population which might have been otherwise sympathetic to the opposition cause.
Although Roderick Chia agreed with Mr
Tan’s argument generally, he was, and no doubt still is today, “very critical
of this ‘reality’ that [Singapore] society imposes on us” (source: personal
e-mail communication to first-mentioned author, 16 March 2011). He went on to
add that: “I believe in the SDP’s vision, really; it’s just that I don’t see it
coming to fruition anytime soon” (source: ibid.).
Regarding WP and SDP ideology and practices, Mr Tan
commented as follows:
“Part of WP ideology is we don’t speak badly about
other opposition parties or PAP in public. We feel we are on same side of the
fence [to other opposition parties] but we don’t need to support them. They
[SDP] are different branding. SDP style is engagement; pressure groups;
protests outside the parliamentary system as they feel parliamentary system is
unfair. This approach does not go [down well] with Singaporeans; they are not
politicized; tell them you can do something with your votes; they don’t know
their political rights. CSJ uses Hong Kong style, put pressure, [and] get what
you want. People are not ready for it. SDP brought down opposition cause,
people are influenced by SDP actions [to think] that opposition is dangerous
[or a] bull in a china shop. I have a right to say I want to differentiate the
branding. There is a split because of SDP although ideally we should work
together”.
In this interview response (cited above) Mr Tan indicated
that he was careful and cautious about SDP. He did not believe that SDP’s approach
is suitable for Singapore due to voters not being politically experienced or
mature. Furthermore, he laid blame on SDP for causing voters to be afraid of
opposition politics and for causing opposition disunity. This view is of course
different to that of Dr Wong, Patrick Lee, SDP Assistant Secretary-General John
L. Tan, and others who then attributed opposition disunity to the influence of PAP
and MSM and to the allegedly authoritarianism ways of Mr Chiam.
The WP’s ideological rejection of “Mandelaism”, a word introduced to us by Mr
Tan, was probably the most important philosophical
difference between SDP and WP during the years of WP’s rise, 2006-13.
The WP did not
and does not necessarily present itself as anti-PAP but is more content to work
with the government and to hold it to account much like an auditor does with an
auditee corporation. The auditor analogy works well to describe how WP’s then two
parliamentarians, the elected Low and the then NCMP Sylvia Lim, actually
operated in the parliament. An auditor does not adopt a hostile attitude to the
corporation being audited. Mr Tan stated that: “we think PAP infrastructure is
not so bad or we would not [have] become prosperous” and “you cannot doubt that
Lee Kuan Yew loves Singapore first, but maybe it was convenient for his own
ambitions”.
Mr Tan (personal
interview, 3 March 2010) pointed out that WP usually gets a strong result in
the polls because it is seen as the last remaining living link to the sixties
Chinese-educated left-wing and because its member JBJ was the first opposition
member in the house after PAP regained total control of parliament in 1968. On
this point, Roderick Chia wrote that: “personally I identify with JBJ’s legacy [to
WP] more than the Chinese-speaking one” (personal e-mail communication, 16
March 2011). Mr Tan pointed out that the link to the old Chinese left-wing
should not be understood only in conventional class terms since this grouping has
seen its language and institutions progressively marginalized by the English-educated
PAP faction since the early days of independence.
As to which group of voters the opposition must target to win
more seats, Eric expresses his view on this topic as follows (emphasis added):“In the old days the bottom 20% or 30% [donkeys] are mostly the
underclass and minority populations. After 1991, Eunos GRC, [PAP] almost lost;
PAP knew they nearly lost the underclass. GCT [Goh Chok Tong] focused on this
group. It [opposition vote] shrunk from 35% to 20%; there will always be this
20%; we must capture the middle ground as
that is how you change the country. We have to look at the middle group; they
are not in love with us. We get 25%, we need them; PAP has maybe 30%
diehards; they really believe PAP policy is good for them; we respect that.
Next 20% to 30% is upper middle-class who can see through the deceit; who can
see that life will be tougher [for the] next ten to twenty years; we want to
cultivate them. PAP gives a lot of benefits to underclass now, hard to convert
them; three- or four-room [HDB flat] people are either for you or against you
and fear factor is high; this [winning them over] depends on PAP policy; not
within our power to convert them. You need to show them you have sincere and
credible people. Next group is ‘landed’ [property] and ‘condo’ [condominium]
people [upper middle-class, not necessarily ruling elite, includes
first-generation nouveaux-riche]; PAP looks at very top and very bottom end;
upper middleclass is next ground; less fear factor. I hope we can convince
them. I think we have a chance”. Mr
Tan was realistic and circumspect when we talked in March 2010. He hoped for ten seats to be won for the first time
in GE2011 by WP, bringing the number of opposition MPs to 12 (or 11 if either
Potong Pasir or Hougang fell to PAP). Mr Tan’s prediction was only one
five-person GRC too optimistic with Potong Pasir SMC being, of course, an
opposition loss. Similarly, the SDP’s Chee reminded the researcher (personal
interview, 14 October 2010) that the opposition has often hoped to see a
positive trend in one constituency continue at the next GE but, historically,
it has often been the case that the ground won is then lost again only to be
counter-balanced by an unexpectedly strong result in another constituency.
[By Dr Kieran James, University of Fiji, formerly of University of Southern Queensland, 2006-13.]
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| Activist Roderick Chia celebrates Workers' Party wins at 2011 GE |
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