Readers of Yawning Bread will know where my heart lies, but I can't say that the results were unexpected. I avoided making any predictions prior to polling day except to a handful of close friends, but when asked, I had said "83:1".

So, in a sense, the final result of "82:2" was a shade better than I expected. The People's Action Party (PAP) won 45 of the contested seats, while Low Thia Khiang and Chiam See Tong from the Opposition kept their Hougang and Potong Pasir seats respectively. These 45, together with the 37 won by default on Nomination Day, gives the PAP a total of 82 seats in the next Parliament.

An overall 66.6% of the vote for the People's Action Party was also roughly what observers had been expecting: somewhere in the mid-sixties. So all in all, there were no big surprises on election day.

If anything, the results shows how conservative the voters are. People stick with the known. Even in Potong Pasir, despite being starved of help from the government for 18 years, the voters increased their support for Chiam from the wafer-thin margin of the 2001 election to 55.8% this time.

I know of no one who had expected this.

Likewise, Low Thia Khiang improved his margin in Hougang constituency to 62.7%, his highest ever.

Although the opposition parties ended up with the same number of seats as in the last parliament, the numbers were somewhat gratifying. The Workers' Party's 43.9% in Aljunied was quite decent, despite having only one top-line figure in Sylvia Lim. The other candidates weren't all that well-known. Even James Gomez became well known for reasons other than what he would have wanted. The party's score certainly lays a good foundation for the future.

The surprise to me was the respectable showing of the 6 rookies in Ang Mo Kio GRC. To garner 33.9% of the vote in their first electoral foray against the Prime Minister in his own ward is quite fantastic.

I wonder if what this shows is a lesson for the future. These rookies were clean-cut, fresh-faced and largely spoke in good English and good Mandarin. They stuck to the party message, dealt with issues and didn't use dialects. 

The press said they got a lift from the overall reputation of the Workers' Party, but so should other WP candidates elsewhere.

Yet in all those constituencies where the older generation of opposition politicians regaled audiences with pithy Teochew and earthy Hokkien, they did no better than the rookies (other than Low in Hougang). Even in Joo Chiat where constituents were unhappy with the flourishing girlie trade virtually at their doorsteps, Chinese-speaking Tan Bin Seng of the WP (who had contested many elections before and so was quite well known) couldn't manage more than 35% against a colourless Chan Soo Sen of the PAP.

Poh Lee Guan got only 31.4% of the votes against the PAP's Ho Peng Kee in Nee Soon East who can't speak Hokkien.

The days of dialect campaigning against the PAP may be drawing to a close. I think we have seen a glimpse of the future.

With Low and Chiam's victories in their constituencies, the question may need to be asked: is the upgrading carrot any good? It seems not.

But now, what I am more concerned about is how, having made those lavish promises of hundreds of millions of dollars in each GRC, the government has to live up to them. Money spent on these promises has to come out from somewhere.

I wonder whether we are thus starving other needs, e.g. healthcare and public transport, of funds as a result of having to divert so much money to real estate and related facilities. Is our economy sinking too much money into property and its improvements, at the expense of other social needs?

Once again, the results showed the homogenising effect of super-sized 'group representation constituencies' (GRC). As in previous elections, no GRC delivers a result that is more than about 10% from the average for the election as a whole.

In this election, the average PAP vote-share was 66.6%. The best PAP win in a GRC was in Sembawang, where they obtained 76.7%. The worst PAP showing was in Aljunied, where they obtained 56.1%.

This suggests therefore that for opposition parties to win GRCs and thereby get a reasonable presence in Parliament, the PAP share of the vote has to drop below 60%. When that day will come, no one knows.

But it is not unforeseeable. If the American (and thus global) economy tanks over the next few years, yet we continue to suffer the income disparity effects of globalisation, then the economic picture may be very different by the next election. If the opposition parties keep working the ground and learn to use new media to their advantage, then the next contest may be different again.

This homogenising effect of GRCs once again highlights the heightened risk that Singapore runs. If in one election, the PAP vote-share falls to 45% then the PAP is likely to be forever shut out of Parliament.

Is 45% for the PAP far-fetched? Unimaginable? No. Just look at Potong Pasir.

Given the system we have, with an average of 55%, the opposition will likely win 3/4 of the GRCs. With 75% control of Parliament, they can change the constitution. Done ruthlessly, they can lock out the PAP for good. Control of the press and broadcasting will change hands, judicial appointments can be reviewed at will.

What we have here is a winner-takes-all system. A system like this tends to have the veneer of stability – a moderate majority ends up looking rock-solid – but in fact it's like balancing an egg on its end. A wind comes from one direction and it topples over, unable to recover.

In previous articles I have argued for a mixed electoral system. My preferred model is one where we have 50 single-member constituencies (SMC) and 50 seats elected by proportional representation (PropR).

Each citizen living in Singapore gets 2 votes: one for his SMC and one for the PropR election. Overseas citizens get only 1 vote, for the PropR part.

We may even consider allowing permanent residents a vote in the SMC part. They pay taxes; some of them even do National Service, so why not?

The 50 SMCs can be contested on a first-past-the-post method like we do now. A minor point is whether the member of parliament (MP) for the SMC is also to run the town council, or whether there should be separate elections for district mayor. I'm okay with either.

SMCs have the advantage of their MPs knowing their constituents well and being able to represent their daily, ground concerns, e.g. jobs, traffic congestion, noise pollution, even lift upgrading. For this reason, a case can be made out that permanent residents should get a vote too.

But where SMCs fail is in the fact that some concerns are not municipal in character; furthermore they are minority concerns in all constituencies, SMC or GRC. Not being a majority in any SMC, these minority concerns never get represented anywhere.

In a single-city state like Singapore, particularly with a dominant housing provider that has policies to homogenise all housing estates, not just along the lines of race, but also in achieving similar age and socio-economic mixtures everywhere, minority concerns are, if not deliberately, certainly very effectively, spread so thin that their voices are lost.

In which district are divorcees and single-parents concentrated? If none, how do they send their representatives to Parliament? In which district are gays and lesbians concentrated? If none, who will care to listen to them?

Minority opinions – and just about everybody has minority concerns, e.g. as a believer in environmental issues, as an atheist, a senior citizen or a small businesswoman – are best represented either by small parties that particularly focus on issues that matter to them (e.g. a Green Party, or an Entrepreneurs' Party), or by large parties whose manifestos take the trouble to reflect their concerns.

If say, 6% of voters feel strongly about environmental issues to give their vote to the Green Party, then the party gets to send their top 3 PropR representatives to Parliament. Through effective debate, they may have some influence over policy.

If my proposed system had been in place, what would this election's result look like?

Let's say Chiam and Low stood for 2 out of the 50 SMCs; let's say they win them. Then of the SMCs, the score would be 48 seats to 2.

Of the PropR vote, let's say it follows the overall result for Singapore as whole on 6 May 2006. The PAP wins 66.6%, the Workers' Party 16.35%, the Singapore Democratic Alliance 12.97% and the Singapore Democratic Party 4.09%.

That being the case, 33 PropR seats would go to the PAP, 8 to WP, 7 to SDA and 2 to SDP.