Under such a system, it also means that the next prime minister would have to born around 1962 – 1967, so that he would be aged 50 – 55 by 2017.

Currently, there are only two members of the cabinet born in the 1960s -- Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, and Lui Tuck Yew, Acting Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts, both born 1961. Vivian's star may be fading. In Lui's case, he seems identified with conservative Christianity, which may prove problematic after the searing experience of the AWARE saga. This was when Christian fundamentalists tried to take over a secular civil society organisation, as part of an attempt to impose sectarian religious beliefs on a multi-denominational society and a secular state (not that Lui had any part of it).

This is the background behind the recent report about the significance of the new candidates to be unveiled by the People's Action Party (PAP) for the coming general election.

Given the PAP's grip on power, it may be more important to watch the goings-on within the PAP than what Singapore's opposition parties are doing. The PAP's succession plan is far more probable than any opposition party coming close to power, whether they worked within the system or outside it.

This is why the title of this series of essays includes "and why... they may not matter at all".

Yet, succession plans throughout history have a knack for coming to grief. I can imagine, for example, a scenario playing out like this: As 2017 approaches and a successor to Lee has to be nominated, other heavyweight cabinet ministers born in the late 1950s start to question why they should be passed over. This cohort has, for example, Ng Eng Hen, currently Education Minister (born 1958), Gan Kim Yong, currently Manpower Minister (born 1959), K Shanmugam, currently Law Minister (born 1959), Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Finance Minister (born 1957) and even Lim Hwee Hua, Second Minister for Finance (born 1959).

They may be nearing sixty by then, but they could well question why they are considered too old. They may dispute the principle that a new prime minister must by young enough to have a clear shot at 10 – 15 years in office, or even the rule that he should step aside when he reaches 65.

Such a scenario may become more likely if big egos are involved, and/or if, perhaps due to economic stagnation, there are serious differences of opinion about policy paths. In that case, a possible outcome may be a split in the People's Action Party, as two camps compete for the top job and the reins of government.

It is at that point when politics in Singapore really changes.

Look around the world, and this is quite a common story. Even in Malaysia, for all the excitement of the March 2008 elections when the ruling Barisan Nasional got a drubbing, the change point could well be said to be back in September 1998 when then-Prime Minister Mahathir sacked then-Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

It was the split in the cabinet that changed the game.

Without Anwar, the two main opposition parties, DAP and PAS, could never get together to pose any real challenge to Barisan Nasional. Even now with Anwar and his PKS party as marriage broker, the wheels of the opposition alliance are always on the point of coming off.

After this long period, the LDP was composed of ministers with no common touch, and who relied too much on faceless bureaucrats for decision-making. Worse, the ministers continued to live it up; one scandal after another felled members of the cabinet, and with them, the party's reputation. Retired bureaucrats often parachuted into cushy sinecure positions. Meanwhile, the country's chief pension fund system broke down because records had been lost.

There was a widespread sense of economic misdirection despite middle-class comfort, a sense that while on a day-to-day basis, things weren't too bad, the country had lost its way and the future looked darker each passing year. People felt that the ruling party had no new ideas, and were too often implementing more of the same old policies that hadn't really worked.

Is it conceivable that one day, Singapore too might find itself in a rut like this? I'd say yes, because we get hints of the same elements -– ministers with neither vision nor charisma, bureaucrats on autopilot with fat nest-eggs, and an economic path that seems to get rockier and rockier.

But where did the DPJ come from, to seize the reins of power? For decades, the main opposition party in the Japanese parliament was the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), but it never really made enough headway to get near a majority.

The power behind the DPJ is Ichiro Ozawa, who was once the Chief Secretary of the LDP. He left the LDP after an internal fight with other faction bosses in 1993, thereafter wending his way through many small parties before eventually leading the DPJ.

He has his critics and it is too early to say how successful Hatoyama's government will be, but the point is that it took an ex-LDP leader to unseat the LDP.

In the preceding decade, as the LDP's grip weakened, the JSP and smaller parties that sprang up independently, such as the New Komeito Party, were invited to be coalition partners. Even today, despite winning 308 lower house seats out of 480 in the August general election, the DPJ governs with coalition partners because by itself the DPJ does not have a majority in the upper house.

Yet, none of these small parties have any hope of getting to power on their own. Not before, not even now when the LDP has been humbled. It appears that a hegemonic power falls not so much because opposition parties succeed in winning voter support gradually, but because Goliath first stumbles in its management of the country, then splits through infighting, with the rump group delivering the coup de grâce some years later.

If that is the standard model, then even if watching opposition parties is more fun, watching the PAP may prove more productive.

© Yawning Bread