I thought I saw the light at the end of the tunnel when I read that the National Solidarity Party [NSP] is ‘prepared to make way for the Workers’ Party [WP]’ in the Moulmein-Kallang GRC. That was before I read the conditions that Goh Meng Seng (NSP’s Secretary-General) set for the WP, and that is – the NSP will not contest ‘only if the WP sends its top guns there’. By ‘top guns’, he was specifically referring to WP’s Secretary-General and Chairman, Low Thia Kiang and Sylvia Lim respectively.

Goh Meng Seng says that he ‘wants to help the opposition realise its dream of winning a GRC at the coming general election’ and that he wants ‘to see a GRC fall at this election, so that PAP MPs and ministers know there is no safe fortress in GRCs’. As netizen and regular opposition critic ‘Bryan Ti’ suggested – It is probable that Goh Meng Seng is implicitly suggesting to the WP to concentrate its fire power in the Aljunied GRC where their winning chances are higher. If that was the case, the image of Goh Meng Seng with an itch on the left of his face but scratching it with the right hand going behind the neck comes to mind.

Most people would have read the story of the Top Horse, Middle Horse and Weak Horse (see story on right). It is an old example of strategy that many of us would have heard of. Why is Goh Meng Seng fielding his ‘best horses’ – the two former government scholarship holders – in Moulmein-Kallang in the first place? They are going to run up not just against the Tali-PAP, but also against the WP – which would possibly be the most popular opposition party right now. As ‘Bryan Ti’ pointed out, wouldn’t it be better to use them to shore up his own team in Tampines GRC? In fact, that would allow him to concentrate his firepower on the much hated Mah Bow Tan Mabok Tongue on the matter of public housing. Hazel Poa has definitely written on the topic of public housing privately, and also when she was a RP member. Not to mention that I seem to recall seeing a video of Tony Tan (Hazel’s husband) speaking on the matter of bring the cost of public housing down at the RP Rally and Picnic in Hong Lim Park as well. Of course, Goh Meng Seng can’t just say he give up and let WP walk away with this without a considerable loss of face, and thus he throw this outrageous challenge in the face of his former mentor.

It is my opinion that this is an offer that the WP should simply ignore. To abandon either Hougang SMC or Aljunied GRC offers no advantage to the WP at all. (Alternatively, it can just be treacherous and agree to it and then field something else on nomination day.) While this seems like an offer that is beneficial to the opposition as a whole, and setting the stage for the other parties to ‘settle their differences’, it is nothing more than a third rate political ploy that benefits no one other than the NSP itself, and does nothing to cultivate democracy in Singapore.

Most have pointed out that a 3-corner fight benefits the incumbent and does nothing to benefit the voter. But neither does this ‘masak-masak’ (Malay: loosely translated as child’s play) way of deciding who would contest benefit the voters at all. I strongly object to such undemocratic political horse trading and ‘black box’ negotiations. On what basis do the opposition parties decide who should contest which constituency? I had objected to the By Election Effect Strategy (BEES) in which the opposition has for too long abandoned voters in the west side of Singapore, and allowing us ‘no choice’ by giving the Tali-PAP a walkover. The decision to avoid 3-corner fights and deciding on which party would contest is the next worse thing – since a party which I favored might not show up in the end. It annoys me to no end that the opposition parties at times shamelessly talk about how Singapore lacked democracy when they resort to picking the alternative candidates for us without even asking for our opinion in the matter!

Frankly, an opposition party cannot justify that it has worked the ground long enough and the other party asan interloper simply because it has more photos to show on its website or a Facebook page. Take for example Pioneer SMC where I stayed, the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), NSP and RP have all shown their interest to contest. The RP has done the most walk abouts in the area, but that does not mean I would vote any RP candidate that contest here. In fact, I don’t even know who the RP will be putting up to contest here. Kenneth Jeyaratnam – its Secretary-General – is perhaps the only face I know. That’s not mentioning, should a SDP candidate ends up as the opposition’s choice to contest in Pioneer, I will be so pissed off that I might deliberately cast a rejected vote even though I may have intended to vote the opposition in the first place. It is a wasteful exercise to make me go to the polls when most of the other people would rather not vote the SDP. However, if there is some form of poll showing that the majority of the voters in Pioneer SMC prefers a particular party’s candidate, I might actually rally behind this candidate as long as I have no reservations about the candidate and his party.

A friend pointed out that the fact that some opposition parties feared a 3-corner fight is that they never in the first place even believe they can win. I agree with this friend, and I do not say this lightly. After all, it is evident that only 25% or less of voters vote indiscriminately in favor of the opposition throughout the years and the middle voters are generally not easily swayed. One simply need to look at the past election results to see it for themselves. So what about 3-corner fights that really spooked some of these opposition parties is the fear of vote dilution. They seem to believe that presenting the voters that it’s either us or those ‘Tali-PAP frakkers’, the voters would happily vote for them as long as they are pissed off with the Tali-PAP. At the very least, even if they lose, they don’t end up losing their deposits. It wouldn’t be stretching it to say that these opposition candidates go to the polls with the same mood as a punter who bought a Toto ticket, hoping that by chance they get lucky with a win. At the same time, they hope to get their bet back even when they don’t win at all!

Thus, it would actually be better for the voters and our election culture to allow 3-corner fights to occur. In Taiwan, multi-corner fights are so common that if there are more than one candidate from the same ‘color’ (be it Blue or Green – the colors of Kuomintang [KMT] and Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] respectively), their voters will simply rally behind and endorse just one candidate of that ‘color’ and ‘discard’ the rest. In Chinese it is called 棄保效應 in which I loosely translate as the ‘Discard and Protect’ Effect. In short, if the opposition parties cannot come to terms (even through non-democratic, ‘black box’ negotiations) and avoid 3-corner fights, let it happen so the candidates who hope to get lucky lose their deposits. Let some of those people who have always been also-rans (and clearly will never get elected) quit because they can no longer afford to run. Otherwise, we will never hear the end of such dogfights between the opposition parties before every election. What purpose does it serve other than to cause voters to lose heart over the lack of the ever illusive (and non-existent) ‘opposition unity’?

Let’s face it, there are no friends forever in politics. Imagine the day when one opposition party comes into power, does anyone think it would actually treasure the past good relationship and so-call ‘camaraderie’ with the other parties?