PAP did somewhat poorer than I expected; I assume George Yeo will be appointed ambassador to UN or US, while Lim Hwee Hwa will go to Temasek and later become Ho Ching's successor (they even look a bit alike) with all those rising stars coming into the PAP contingent, two cabinet vacancies have benefits...
the increased vote in LHL's own electorate shows that, despite the prevailing sour mood, some personal good campaigning can reverse the trend; hence, the poor performance in other areas shows shortcomings in campaigning, it is inadequate for PAP to rely on headhunting candidates with good career track records to beat opponents; to be effective they would need to establish a better link with voters locally; some do this through long grassroots work, like Sitoh Yih Pin in Potong Pasir and Silvia Lim in Aljunied, some do it through image projection, like Low Thia Khiang bringing his Hougang record and national press coverage into neighbouring Aljunied; some do it through celebrity presence, like Nicole Seah's facebook appeal; if one fails to establish some such connect in an electorate, then one does not have much impact in bringing in votes
did LHL's humble apology bring votes? yes but the effect is personal, it does not carry to Aljunied and elsewhere; did the distribution of prosperity dividends to citizens make people happier? not sure, maybe things would have been even worse without it, but again it did not bring in votes where it is most needed; a more focused distribution, e.g., for old people or people receiving welfare support, might be more useful; if someone has the grievance of not being able to afford .5M property, how would 500$ pacify him?
one curious issue is why Tin Pei Ling was fielded in Marine Parade and not Holland Bukit Timah - she had worked in her father's Ghim Moh coffeeshop and did Young PAP work there and might have been better received; I believe things would also have gone better if she was introduced in the last batch of candidates - after people have seen the generals, senior civil servants, trade union officials, doctors and lawyers and got rather bored, they would be more inclined to accept some diversity
the replacement of Chen Soo Sen by Charles Chong in Joo Chiat was also curious; if the objective is to reduce the general age level, Chen is younger than Chong; maybe Chong had more factional support within PAP, which counted for more than Chen's personal base in Joo Chiat? in any case, the near loss of Joo Chiat shows that the PAP's brand name is not enough to overcome local feelings.
I believe this will be the last election in which LKY will stand as a candidate, and PAP as well as the people will need to learn to face the post-LKY era. Even though there have been 21 years, 4 election campaigns and two prime minsters since his retirement as PM, Singapore is unprepared
added on 14/5/11 - LKY and GCT both announced that they will not be joining the new cabinet; I do not know whether they individually reached the same decision at the same time, or the party central executive met and decided this, or I guess to be most likely, LHL decided this after discussing it with both individuals as well as a few close advisers. Obviously, their leaving makes it easier to carry out the political renewal that has been talked about for some time; in fact, if they both left parliament in the 2011 election, the average parliamentary age would have dropped by 1, making it unnecessary to bring in a 27 year old newcomer to try reduce this number; that must have cost them many votes, distracting attention from various material issues that PAP would have preferred to focus on, and opening the way for the opposition to bring even younger and better looking models and generate the wrong kind of buzz If they announced before the election that they plan to continue as MPs but leave the cabinet, PAP would have received more votes, with the feeling "let's give LHL a chance to see how he performance without the old men", but now it is too late for that kind of benefit.
there have been extensive local and overseas commentry on the development, one comment I disagree with: GCT is credited with "opening up" "softer touch"; well, under him suing opposition leaders for hundreds of thousands became regular practice, and he was the one to tell Catherine Lim to shut up; I also discount the idea of him leading a pro-opening up PAP faction - in the 2006 election LHL gave him the task of helping the PAP Hougang and Potong Pasir candidates, because of his presumable popularity with voters; he turned out to be ineffective; his 55% in the 2011 election confirms that he is no more popular than any other minister
someone said LKY has been preparing Singapore for the post LKY era for a long time; I again disagree - Singapore is unprepared because it never quite understood LKY's operation, since most discussions were merely a mix of PAP and anti PAP propaganda in various proportions and both types deliberately or inadvertently miss the essence;,those who want to learn the nature of Lkyism should read my article http://sinazen.com/neoconfucianism without this understanding, you cannot really figure out what has changed and what is the same, what is post LKY and what is not
added on 18/5/11 LHL has announced his new cabinet; from the way he threw out old timers, he is at last setting himself up to be a strong leader; however, he should have done the cabinet reshuffle before the election - he would have got 70% easily
is vivian balakrishnan's new post a demotion? a bit hard to tell
in the following 5 years, donations and candidates will flow towards WP, leaving the other parties to fight for scraps; they might have done better than last time, but WP has done so much more better, and smart money/people would find it a more worthy investment; it would be in PAP's interest to promote opposition diversity
I myself dont take those popular facebook candidates so seriously; they will find advertising and other business opportunities now coming their way too tempting to concentrate on political activism; it is so easy to turn up for the next election without doing much grassroots work in between; not everyone has the spirit of Silvia Lim and Sitoh Yih Pin
I heard numerous comments about PAP not knowing how to use social media; I disagree; they do not lack knowledge; what they lacked was message. Governments do things, they then tell people what they did/plan to do and why. They got those messages across long ago and there is nothing new for PAP bloggers to say.
Social media can help candidates to show what they are like; but would anyone be interested in knowing more about the senior civil servants, generals, trade union leaders etc PAP recruited? of course they are able and successful people, who would want to spend time to know additional details? they simply cannot do a Nocole Seah. What people are interested in happens to be what PAP does not want to talk about: who decided to recruit Tin Pei Ling and why? why was Lim Boon Heng suddenly told to retire? what really happened with Steve Tan?
the web was very important to the oppositon parties before the election campaign started: it allowed them to get the messages out and to raise money, but once the campaign got underway, it merely added to the background buzz; for celebrity candidates like Nicole Seah, facebook was extremely useful for getting messages out to fans. I dont believe it is useful for average new politicians.
in this election there was only one 3-cornered fight with two opposition parties competing in the same electorate, one candidate scoring below 12.5% and losing his election desposit; in fact you have to thank PAP for setting a high election deposit, thus discouraging such 3-cornered fights - the chance of the lowest count falling below 12.5% is too high; hence, it might be in the interest of PAP to reduce the deposit amount and encourage more candidates to take a chance
similarly, it might be in PAP's interest to abolish the NCMP system: given the strength of WP, there is a high chance that its candidates would score highest losing counts in addition to higher chance of winning; WP thus stands to gain the greatest benefit from the system, and it might be in PAP's interest to bring in some form of proportionate representation instead, either a system similar to Taiwan's mixing first past the post and proportionate representation in the same chamber, or two chambers one based on first past the post and the other (senate) proportionately represented; either way, it gives 2nd, 3rd.. largest opposition parties a better chance to participate in parliament thus reducing WP's influence;
While the majority of 60% is still very respectable, its impact on PAP is much greater than one might appreciate at first: if you want army generals, senior civil servants, well paid business executives etc to quit their jobs and run in the next election with the expectation of getting a cabinet post afterward, they need to be fairly certain that they will be voted in; in other words, they will run in safe PAP districts; the PAP national vote no longer guarantees any particular electorate to be completely safe; if the % drops further, the whole recruitment strategy will be in jeopardy. In most cases, the candidates can request for reemployment back into their previous posts; nevertheless the move now involves some risk and joining politics is no longer the kind of simple career move it used to be.