Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party has long been famous for never losing an election, winning every vote since the city-state became independent in 1965. To be sure, in the past the PAP won by tilting the playing field in its favor before Election Day, and to some extent it still does so today. But rather than using obvious and outright authoritarian tactics to win votes, the PAP has shifted toward using subtler means.
For instance, it has shaped the electoral system to greatly benefit itself, particularly with the introduction of multi-member representative constituencies, which mostly replaced single-member districts in 1988. Theoretically intended to guarantee minority representation for ethnic Malays and Indians in parliament, the winner-takes-all system ends up rewarding the dominant PAP. It also requires parties to recruit and run more candidates in any given election, which demands a larger party infrastructure and requires spending more money. For most of Singapore’s modern history, opposition parties rarely had the resources necessary to fully contest the seats, while the PAP did.
And if the government has moved away from directly restricting political discourse through the detention of opposition leaders and critics in recent years, it has found indirect ways of doing so. When opposition figures have criticized the government’s actions, for instance, PAP members have sued for libel in Singapore’s compliant courts, often resulting in fines that bankrupted the critics while creating a chilling effect for others.