Comment: The idea of 'The Opposition' is dead & it was killed by the opposition

Singapore's May 3 general election was an unexpected consolidation of political orthodoxy in Singapore.

The People's Action Party (PAP) was dominant with over 65 per cent vote share nationally, the Workers Party (WP) was its fiercest competitor, with slightly over 50 per cent vote share where it contested, and the other Opposition…

Well, how can I put this delicately?

"The Opposition" is dead

The idea of a unified, cooperative opposition that together fought against the PAP is dead.

Some might have said it's been dead for a while, some will say it still moves, some will say its death has been slow, but it is now dead.

This does not mean "opposition" (with a small o) is dead, far from it.

It thrives in its own way and place, but Singaporean voters have made two clear preferences known in 2025: who it wants its government to be and who it wants to challenge them in parliament.

Opposition unity is an illusion

Spencer Ng, the National Solidarity Party's secretary-general, lamented about "opposition unity" after the election, telling reporters that in "this particular GE, opposition unity is an illusion", as reported by CNA.

And he would know, as the NSP found itself in two multi-cornered fights: against the Singapore Democratic Party in Sembawang GRC; and the WP and People's Power Party in Tampines GRC.

It lost deposits in both, with 2 per cent in Sembawang and 0.18 per cent in Tampines.

And Ng might feel aggrieved with other opposition parties in both cases.

NSP has contested Sembawang thrice since 2015, with the SDP contesting twice before that.

The SDP returned to Sembawang as part of its "Northern Strategy" in 2022, but in the three years since they made the declaration, the two parties had not come to accommodation.

The PPP also had its own story to tell about "Opposition Unity".

Walkovers

I was at Kong Hwa School on Nomination Day, the nomination centre for Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC, or Marine Parade for brevity.

In the four hours, I was there, we had expected that there would be a WP team show up for nomination day; some outlets even speculated (internally) that it might be breakout WP star, Harpreet Singh.

But other than three people dressed in light blue shirts, but with no party insignia, crossing the street and immediately turning back, there was no sign of the party.

The gathered press buzzed with excitement when the realisation began to trickle through: Marine Parade would be a walkover.

Not only had the WP decided not to contest, no other opposition party had figured it out or been told, meaning that there would be a walkover for the first time since 2011.

People's Power Party sec-gen Goh Meng Seng was especially angered at this, and for the first few days of the election campaign, it appeared that he was contesting against the WP, not the PAP, accusing them of abandoning Marine Parade, amongst other things.

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This without even getting into the pre-election manoeuvres where opposition alliances looked to collapse even before the writ of election was out, and the WP deciding not to attend official opposition parties talks, a long-standing tradition until GE2020 (because of Covid-19).

How did we get here?

But political observers might note that this has been a long time coming.

One of the most often-heard comments about multi-cornered fights is that it might split the "opposition vote" and allow the PAP to win by default, whereas a single opposition party might make a breakthrough.

But if that was ever a possibility, it has been over for a while:

The MacPherson SMC contest in 2015 saw the PAP candidate Tin Pei Ling face off against WP's Bernard Chen and NSP's Cheo Chai Chen.

Rather than splitting the vote, voters who did not vote for the PAP and Tin, clearly decided to back the WP candidate overwhelmingly over the NSP one, who ended up losing his deposit with 0.82 per cent of the vote.

In the 2013 Punggol East SMC by-election, voters clearly chose WP's Lee Li Lian (54.50 per cent) over the other two opposition parties and PAP's Koh Poh Koon (43.73 per cent).

RP's Kenneth Jeyaretnam and SDA's Desmond Lim ended up losing their deposits with 1.2 per cent and 0.57 per cent of the vote respectively.

Singaporean voters made a clear decision to pick a party that was seen as more viable, even dominant within the opposition space.

Serious parties

This is not an isolated opinion; it is shared by other observers and former political actors.

Former PAP MP Inderjit Singh, known for speaking his mind frankly, said it well in his analysis of 2025: "Singaporeans can see a clear difference between the serious parties and lesser reputed parties".

Former ST editor Bertha Henson calls this GE a "clear rejection of mosquito parties", noting that even independent candidates garnered more votes than they did.

These results are higher than the average vote share percentages of Red Dot United (23.35), People's Alliance for Reform (19.08 per cent), Singapore United Party (10.84 per cent), People's Power Party (5.47 per cent) and National Solidarity Party (1.19 per cent).

Since 2015, without a WP candidate, "The Opposition" has rarely broken 35 per cent of the vote.

Without the PSP or SDP, they rarely break 25 per cent.

To be really nerdy about this, this follows a theory proposed by French political scientist, Maurice Duverger, who posited that in single seat first-past-the-post (FPtP) voting systems, a two-party system will emerge over time.

Voters in such a system will not want to "waste" their vote on a party less likely to win and form policy, regardless of that party or the voters' own ideology.

Put even more simply: There are no "opposition votes" to split. There are only Singaporeans' votes.

Fighting down and up

And I don't bring up political theory to look smart; I bring it up because political parties in Singapore are aware of the phenomenon.

The WP is known to favour, at least at one point in time, the elimination of the GRC system, wanting to return to Singapore's original all-SMC, FPtP system.

While reverting to an all-SMC parliament will likely help all opposition parties, FPtP is a curious choice for the WP and puts it out of step with opposition parties all over the world.

They often favour electoral reform to include some kind of preferential voting or proportional representation system, such as shown by the Electoral Reform Society in the United Kingdom.

Failure to bring about this kind of electoral reform is one of the critiques of former Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's time in power, reneging on a first-term promise to introduce such reform (sorry, I have Canada on my mind).

However, FPtP probably represents the WP's optimal chance of cementing the second party position in an emerging two-party system, even if it may make ultimate entry into government more difficult.

And I don't want to be interpreted as implying some kind of malice here, it is simply in keeping with the WP's position of being a pragmatic Opposition party: pragmatism in parliament is sustained by pragmatism out of it.

Open system

The Marine Parade decision is a move born of cold-blooded pragmatism: it knew that to signal its withdrawal from Marine Parade would allow the PAP to align its forces against it where it did decide to contest.

They ultimately failed to keep it secret, as the PAP redeployed Ministers Tan See Leng and Gan Kim Yong to block the WP decisively, but the theory behind it seems sound.

But the WP didn't let the other opposition know ahead of time, likely figuring that it had nothing to fear from multi-cornered fights, and the tactical advantage they gained from secrecy was far more than what they might get from "opposition unity".

The SDP clearly made a similar calculation in Sembawang, although it wasn't as secret about it.

When SDP chairman Paul Tambyah was asked a question about a three-cornered fight in Sembawang, he smiled and said, "we're not too troubled".

As WP leader Pritam Singh said earlier in the year, Singapore's politics was "open system", and more multi-cornered fights could be expected.

Rising tide

So when the new parliament sits, Singapore will have come to a milestone that almost every First Past the Post-democracy eventually passes.

GE2025 is one of only two elections since 1984 which resulted in only two parties sitting in Parliament.

It is perhaps the most definitively so since independence (although it should be noted that SDP's Chee Soon Juan missed out on breaking up this cosy arrangement by a mere half a per cent).

Barring a severe collapse on the part of the WP, made far less likely by the fact that the WP has multiple possible future leaders amongst its ranks, this is the shape of the future.

It did not achieve this through opposition unity, but by presenting a clear and distinct option for Singaporeans: distinct from the PAP, but also distinct from the mass of opposition parties aside from it.

If other opposition parties thought that WP blue was a rising tide that would lift all boats, they should be disabused of this notion.

Railing against the voters, because they chose to actually look at the prospects presented to them rather than just voting for another option, is unlikely to make such parties more appealing, whether in 2015 or 2025.

Time to sink or swim.

Top image from National Archives.