Clever, Clever WP

Photo from TOC

I am writing this quickly as the news just broke a while ago: the Workers' Party has expelled Hougang Member of Parliament and their ex-comrade, Yaw Shin Leong.

As stunned responses flood social media and office chatter heats up, the probable first question on your mind would be, by-elections in Hougang?

Besides it being a hoot (a by-election so soon after the last General Election), it would be priceless opportunity to put the PAP scorecard under scrutiny, it would pretty much be a great report card on their post-election (2011) performance.

When I commented that this was a brilliant strategic move by the WP, since it forces the PAP's hand, a friend had doubts that it would be a win-win for WP. They may not win a by-election. I disagreed. For these reasons:

First, the mood on the ground (from the blogosphere and online media reports) is Hougang residents don't much care about the adultery "scandal" that has been dogging YSL. It's great gossip fodder for the few who relish in the demise of others, but most people are more concerned about how their MP could and is helping them, and so far, YSL's performance as an MP hasn't been blemished.

Second, Hougang is a pro-WP ward but it was largely LTK that they have allegiance to and YSK was his proxy during the GE 2011. LTK's staunch supporters will see this sacking as a decisive move on LTK's part to remove the rot, and likely have even more "respect" for this bold move. In a possible by-election they would simply vote whomever WP pushes forth as the replacement.

Third, Hougang is a single-seat ward. No matter what, WP can parachute in a replacement easy-peasy, and my guess is they already have one in mind (hint: GG). I doubt the Elections Department can manage a redrawing of boundaries to make Hougang disappear in the next few weeks.

So, no matter what transpires from hereon, my bet is it would be a win-win for the Workers' Party.

And this shows very clearly that a few people in the WP are very, very clever indeed.

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Update 16 February & Postscript

Reports in the mainstream press (TNP and ST) have revealed some other interesting news from the WP press conference. According to the party, Yaw had not come forth to dispel or clarify the rumours when invited to by the CEC on multiple occasions. The implication is that the CEC was just as much in the dark as everyone else who had been clamouring for the "truth". In response to the PM's accusation that the WP had "let down the voters of Hougang", LTK rebutted this by claiming the WP had fixed the problem (by sacking Yaw). 

As expected, the PM doesn't sound very enthusiastic about the prospect of a by-Election, and I am not surprised (see by 3 reasons above). In addition to the inconvenience of having to rustle up a campaign that wasn't planned for like almost every other election (except maybe Anson) in our post-Independence history, the PAP are probably not feeling at the top of their game at this point. Reasons:

a) The memory of recent screwups is still fresh in the people's minds -- they likely will think about the transportation bungles like taxi fare hikes, SMRT train breakdowns and the incompetencies of its ex-CEO.

b) People are likely still pissed off about the Ministerial Salary Review, the recommendations (by the Ee Committee) which were pushed through hastily in Parliament barely a week before the media leaked the CPIB probe into ex-SCDF and CNB chiefs for alleged misconduct and possible corruption. Anyone with functional use of their left brain could put the two together and conclude that the news could've been embargoed till after the voting on the Minister salaries. Even if it wasn't true, my mind which has now come to be soaked in a conspiracy-theory paradigm, believes it to be plausible. Therefore, trust in the PAP remains low.

c) Social media and online media has exposed a lot of the dominant party's shortcomings by highlighting on a weekly basis, the latest foot-in-mouth moment on someone's Facebook wall, causing a cyber furore that even the mainstream press can't ignore. In short, no PAP chap can sneeze without somebody noticing, examining the snot and announcing its noxiousness online. And there are plenty of other people happy to re-post or retweet it. Add a bad PR management policy to this, and you can understand why the PM is loathe to go down another path of potential face-shaming.

d) The communication strategy of the PAP remains the same: informing the public, recording the feedback and over-focusing on critiques rather than welcoming an open flow of debate. It's not the outcome that matters, you can still do what you want, but how you roll it out matters to how the public perceives you. Plus, people are getting more immune to non-subtle forms of propoganda and sub-texting in the mainstream press. For instance, they don't take too kindly to ST reports that the bottom 20% of the population saw their incomes increase the MOST in 2011 and there being no journalistic examination of what the Statistics Department announced as their hard data. When the numbers contradict social reality, people resolve this cognitive dissonance by rationalising that the government is up to its tricks again.

I think the PAP have been doing the best they can in the wake of GE2011. They addressed many of the issues that were the bugbear of the election last year, like housing. However, they haven't done much on the KPIs that are not so easily identifiable: the political culture of Daddy Knows Best, re-thinking their communication paradigm and being vindictive (attempting to sue for "defamation"). Unfortunately, the policies (good and bad) of the PAP the last 40 years culminated in today's reality that our online and alternative media is probably the most left-leaning and critical of the ruling party in recent history. This means that social media, the most powerful communication tool, is working more against them than for them because of the profile of users and the profile of information purveyors.

Now that the WP have come clean with their audacious and shocking announcement, public perception will lean towards a more positive reading of the WP leadership because they come across as decisive in ensuring the integrity of their party members. This is a very telling contrast to how the government has reacted towards the hoo-ha about the ongoing CPIB and prostitution ring investigations. It's not a fair comparison, I agree, but people are not fair, logical and calm. They are easily-excited and prone to believing ideas because they match their personal biases rather than look for the evidence to disprove the ideas. The trouble with the PAP leadership is they seem to believe (or at least expect) people behave in the first way whenever something unexpected and detrimental to their image happens, and they believe and expect them to behave the second way whenever the time comes for serious policy debate. 

Or here's another thought: in 1986 when JBJ lost his Anson seat when he was convicted of falsifying party documents, the PAP left the seat vacant for a total of 22 months until the next General Elections in 1988. Same thing when their own MP of Geylang West died that year. So waiting it out may be the other strategy, but an option that I doubt would work out for the best. For one thing, people have longer memories now and a shorter attention-span and patience for idiocy; it would be very difficult to explain and justify not calling a by-election. For another, it would be silly to let Hougang become absorbed into Aljunied GRC since that would be how the WP will run things if no MP is elected for Hougang.

Nope, I reckon the PM is definitely not having a good week.