Jordan Sin/

This year’s General Elections have seen the introduction of an unprecedented number of new faces from both the ruling and opposition camps.  Here, I only mention some of the more prominent candidates, and discuss them less as in-depth case studies than lenses that might shed light on broader socio-political trends. Hopefully, this brief, exploratory article will stimulate greater discussion about the meaning of success in Singapore and its changing faces.

Ms Nicole Seah/ credit: Terry Xu

NSP’s Nicole Seah (24) and PAP’s Tin Pei Ling (27) provide intuitive grounds for association insofar as they relate to a particular demographic of young voters. Hence, public discussion surrounding the two–frivolous or substantive–has tended to revolve around their relative personal merits, or at best, how each young woman’s perceived character provides an analogue for their respective parties.

Tin is better understood not as Seah’s personal antithesis, but as yet another product of the PAP government’s long entrenched, managerialist recruitment process, through which almost all other party members, including several ministers, have been inducted.  That her candidacy has shown to be particularly irksome to some voters simply highlights the gulf between government and voter expectations that belies these recruitment processes.

Beneath the sensation of constant comparisons between the two could lie a deeper and more significant development that in fact places Seah in more fruitful consideration with fellow opposition (WP) candidate Chen Show Mao, among others.  This is the rise of the counter-elite in Singapore: individuals who have succeeded outside the state’s jealously guarded talent selection apparatus, and whose credible bid to represent the electorate now directly challenges the institutionalised philosophy of meritocratic elitism, and the PAP government’s prerogative in dictating the very terms of merit and success–both of which form crucial pillars of the ruling party’s legitimacy.

In Nicole Seah’s meteoric rise to public prominence, one feature of her background is consistently under-emphasised: the fact that she does not belong to any recognisably “elite” stratum, as commonly defined for a person of her age.  She does not hail from a wealthy background, and neither did she receive a “branded” education.  It should come as no surprise that Seah freely admitted this in one of her introductory speeches.  The ability to claim a humble or common background is useful political capital that even ruling-party candidates have always readily exploited.

In fact, a PAP candidate’s rise from hardship to potential office dovetails neatly with the state’s ideology of meritocracy. The most recognised endorsement of a person’s capability through this meritocratic system, as defined by success in the local education system, is the award of a prestigious government scholarship for undergraduate study. This in turn places them on accelerated career paths within the public service, the top echelons of which have been harvested for political talent over the years.  Success in the private sector also provides a potential avenue to power, but one that is nonetheless closely mediated through the same criteria that emphasise credentialism over popular validation in a democratic arena.

In short, the paths to power within ruling party politics are fairly consolidated, both structurally and ideologically.  This is invariably demonstrated during election time, when the former-scholar status of new PAP candidates are highlighted with the expectation that this functions as an automatic seal of competence.  For this reason, when ex-scholars/civil servants join opposition politics, the media and the candidates themselves frequently highlight their backgrounds, as it effectively signals a credible vote of no-confidence in the system.  Tan Jee Say has therefore bestowed a particularly huge coup upon the Singapore Democratic Party.

However, direct inversion ultimately affirms the coherence and salience of the object of its rebellion.

The phenomenon of ex-civil-servants in opposition politics should not be discounted, but we should pay equally close attention to those whose nascent prominence reveals potential routes to success that lie outside state-legitimated structures.  While the absence of a scholarship might seem like a considerable handicap to a 24-year old with limited access to other tangible markers of achievement, Nicole Seah seems candid, if not proud of this. That she has achieved prominence and some measure of popularity during this election period suggests to Singaporeans the possibility of being median without mediocrity, a significant departure from the hitherto unrivalled assumption of an instant pedigree conferred by credentials within the public service.

This is also what distinguishes Chen Show Mao from other staple PAP candidate choices (such as former Chief-of-Army Chan Chun Sing), though Chen’s career has been far from ordinary.  A minister’s recent attempt to appropriate Chen’s success by attributing it to the PAP-government’s prescient immigration policies is largely unconvincing.  This is because the blanket benefits from the conducive environment that supposedly cultivated Chen are qualitatively distinct from the purposive talent grooming procedures that initiate many of our political elites into power.

I will not engage in speculation about election outcomes, given the uncertainties of this elections.  Regardless of the results, however, many of these new candidates have left an indelible impression on voters, who are less likely to forget them in the next few years if they are able to strategically harness online social media and alternative news portals.  The precedents they set might, over time, facilitate the consolidation of a new Singaporean elite which represents the viability of political success unbeholden to the criteria and rites of passage defined thus far by the ruling party-government.

Related posts:

1. The Apathetic, the Bandwagoners, and the Counter-Culture
2. PAP is not Singapore, PAP renewal is not Singapore renewal, and Parliament is not a feedback channel
3. Chen Show Mao – changing clientele
4. GE 2011: Singapore political parties’ positions on LGBT concerns
5. Thinking aloud – the Tin Pei Ling issue