Although the General Election happened 2 weeks ago, I still have some things to say. These are not specific to GE2020, but relate to voting in general (in Singapore’s context). One of the talking points from GE2020 is to abolish the Group Representative Constituency (GRC) system. There is a difference between abolishing and changing the GRC system. The first seeks to remove it entirely, resulting in Single Member Constituency (SMC) contest throughout the country while the second retains GRC, but uses a different metric to elect Members of Parliament (MP) into position. If you would like to read my thoughts on why Singapore’s GRC system needs to be changed, you can find it here: Part 1 and Part 2.
In Part 1, I raised the problem with SMCs but did not elaborate on them. Therefore, in this third part of ‘GE2020: Unrepresentative Democracy’, we look at why, while some are seeking to abolish GRC, I hold the opposing view that we should keep GRCs and abolish SMCs instead. Before I get into that, I want to first acknowledge the advantages of SMC:
- Local representative. One of the most clear cut advantages is local representation. Each constituency has a dedicated MP that represents the people of the constituency in parliament.
- You get who you vote for. You can put a name and face to the political party contesting in your constituency. In the case of SMC, independent nominees can also contest without having to do so under a party’s banner.
- Less prone to gerrymandering. While there are no affirmative evidence of this taking place in Singapore, SMC reduces the chances of gerrymandering significantly. Constituency boundaries are drawn along township boundaries and irregularities in boundaries can be immediately detected. SMC are smaller constituencies whose boundaries are less likely to be redrawn unless massive local changes take place in and around the constituency.
What are the disadvantages?
1a) SMCs and FPTP discourage multi-cornered fights.
SMC currently forces all to adopt the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system. Any contest outside of the top 2 candidates in that SMC will always be seen as a spoiler candidate. They take away votes from the main contest and over time, it always results in two-cornered fights. While this is a result of FPTP, the fact that contest in SMC only allows for 1 winner ensures that proportional representation is unlikely to be achieved*.
1b) SMC contests produces only 1 winner.
Two or more candidates fighting it out means that one or more are bound to lose. This is especially painful when multiple candidate contesting in the SMC are capable to contribute in parliament. Yes, our current GRC system does not negate this, but the GRC system has potential for change that can allow two heavy-weights in opposing parties to both enter parliament (as described in Part 1). In the case of SMCs, there can only be a single winner and the losing candidates will not enter parliament. We cannot keep proportional representation and SMCs at the same time without a major overhaul of our current voting system.
To summarise what I just mentioned in point 1, let’s go back to looking at GE2020 and the contests in SMCs.
- All, except 1, SMC are two-cornered fights. The only multi-cornered fight came about only because of an independent candidate decided to contest in Pioneer SMC. Two-cornered flights were deliberately planned by the opposition so that one does not draw votes away from another.
- In a hypothetical world where Singapore were to be made up of only the 14 SMCs contested in GE2020. We would have a parliament with 93% PAP MPs, despite only 61% voting for them.
- SDP and PSP gathered more votes in SMCs than WP but have no representation in parliament.
Not revealed explicitly in the statistics is candidate Dr Paul Tambyah, who contested in Bukit Panjang SMC. Dr Tambyah is a world-renown infectious diseases physician leading the International Society of Infectious Diseases. Yet, we cannot have his expertise represented in parliament because he narrowly missed out in his contest against the PAP under the first-past-the-post SMC contest. Not downplaying the contribution of Dr Tambyah’s opponent, but it is clear that some times, running under the “correct” party banner gives you an edge, regardless of credentials.
2) SMCs fail to capture minority representation.
Unlike GRCs, contests in SMCs have no requirement that the candidate fielded in the contest needs to come from a minority race. There is no way in which this can be changed to reserve certain SMCs for minority candidates without drawing significant backlash. We saw how Singaporeans reacted to the reserved Presidential election. Imagine this is imposed Parliamentary elections. Thus, in order to guarantee minority representation, we need to do it GRC style. Back to the SMC contests for GE2020, of the 14 seats, only 1 MP elected is from a minority race; of the 29 candidates fielded to contest in these 14 SMCs, only 5 (17.2%) are from the minority races. If we want a system that is more (race) representative, SMCs are not helping the cause.
Why do we need guarantee minority representation? In actuality we don’t, but I see value in it and I wish for it to stay. I do not want a system whereby having no minority representation is a possibility. This is why I think that SMCs need to be abolished as they do not embody the same spirit of guaranteed minority representation that GRCs have.
Also, to point out, the GRC system was introduced during a period in Singapore’s politics when minority representation was one of the lowest. After the GRC system was adopted (see cells in yellow), it took just 1 election cycle for Singapore to see a steady number of minority representation matching that of the population of Singapore. If you ask me, GRCs have met its goal of guaranteeing minority representation, both among the ruling party and the opposition parties.
3) SMCs have no real distinction from GRCs at local level.
At the end of the day, SMCs are effectively ran as if they were a part of a GRC; and for most purposes, GRCs are further sub-divided to be ran like an SMC. All Town Councils (TC) of SMCs are ran together with the TCs of GRCs. The lines and distinction between GRC and SMC in such cases are blurred. Take for example my GRC. I belong to Jurong GRC and fall under the jurisdiction of the Jurong-Clementi TC. But this TC does not only belong to Jurong GRC, it is also belongs to Yuhua and Bukit Batok SMC. While it is not wise to then say that Jurong should be a 7-member GRC, we can always draw the boundaries along township lines to ensure that it remains a 5-member GRC, but not have Yuhua carved out of the constituency.
In effect, by doing this, we are not going to significantly increase the number of GRCs while somewhat retaining the same number of seats in parliament. Furthermore, this prevents the situation whereby opposition parties that win an SMC then choose to run the TC separately, leaving to the possibility of needing to split and combine TCs every election cycle. In fact, TCs should not be ran along party lines.
For these reasons, coupled with the problematic FPTP voting system (see Part 2) that we adopt, SMCs have become a hindrance to what I desire Singapore’s parliamentary representation to be. SMCs must go.
*Disclaimer: I know that there are other voting systems out there that work well with SMCs, but for consideration of this piece, I took into account Singapore’s unique position where we want minority representation in Parliament as well as ease of local governance through the TCs. Furthermore, I want to make as little tweaks given Singapore’s current system and needs. Any changes that keep SMCs while ensuring representation would require a major overhaul of our voting system.
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