Today, I attended the IPS Post-Election forum held in Orchard Hotel. It has been an eye-opener for me because I have always been watching all the political forums held in NUS via our campus webcast. Sitting in one actually feels different, because you get a feel of the vibrant atmosphere generated by the commentaries and crossfire between the academics, political commentators, journalists and also the players i.e. the politicians themselves. Many people from all walks of life attended this meeting. Generally, the atmosphere is cordial even with the session on "The Future of the Parties" with various politicians across the spectrum speaking. It seemed that the recent elections are still resonating after a couple of pleasant surprises happened on 6 May 2006.

I will summarize some of my thoughts on two topics that are discussed and some after-thoughts about the issues.

One of the most important questions list down by Tommy Koh today was the following:

What is the truth about the electoral behaviour of the post-65 generation? Did the majority vote for the PAP or the opposition? Was their electoral behaviour any different from the rest of the electorate?

Gillian Koh and her team tried their best to address this question [1] with their post election survey. Given their limited resources, they statistically polled 985 people across all spectrum and take into account eligible voting adults who are either voters this time round or voters living in a walkover constituency. A few conclusions were drawn and these are the ones that struck me on the first go:

• Retail politics, for example, estate upgrading, job issues and cost of living did not take precedence. Given that the perception of a typical Singaporean as a pragmatic and votes according to his or her self-interest, the survey seem to show the contrary. 
   
• Efficiency of the government is the key factor that is considered by most voters, followed by fairness of government, need for alternative views, checks and balances and finally the candidates personality. 
   
• There is no difference in the voting pattern between the post-65 and pre-65 and ethnicity from the results.

The first direct inference that can be drawn from these surprising results is that our electorate has matured. For example, the voters in Potong Pasir and Hougang have chosen the opposition despite the dangling of upgrading carrots. The consensus seems to centre on the fact that most people see fairness as an important issue.

Taking a sceptical hat, I want to express my reservations on such an inference. There are a few questions that they must address before they conclude that the electorate has indeed matured. I like to propose the following questions that might help to consolidate the following claim:

• What is the distribution of voters across the voting constituencies? Are the voters living in the "swing states" like Aijunied GRC have a different voting reason in contrast to a voter living in Sembawang GRC? 
   
• Is the fear factor still a deterrent to Singaporeans in voting for the opposition? The voters may consider values of fairness and need for checks and balances are important, but he or she can vote for the ruling party out of fear. The suggestion to look at the people who rejected doing the survey is not a good indicator, as statistically in the developed nations, the hit rate in business market survey is between 10 to 20%. There is another reason why this question is important. It might be one of the key factors that ruling party is winning this election at 66.6%. 
   
• The sample is too small to make very bold conclusions about the electorate. For statistical sampling to mean something, we need to take 5% of the sample size to be able to effectively reach the law of large numbers so we can rule out the systematic bias. 
   
• Why is the need for checks and balances so important in this election? Is it because incidents like the NKF scandal has snapped the electorate’s tolerance and unhappiness over the ruling party’s policies for the past five years? Perhaps, I would like to pose the following question to validate the claim about the maturing electorate, "Why are checks and balances important and what factors lead you towards this view?"

The evolving electorate has brought in an interesting question that was brought up during the session about the future of the parties. Perhaps, on the back of everyone’s mind, is the ruling party’s strategy in winning elections no longer effective against the electorate?

The best analogy is the example given in Barbara Tuchman’s Pulitzer prize winning book "The Guns of August", a historical account of World War 1. The main argument from the book is that the generals tried to fight a war based on their experience in previous wars. They forgot to take into account of the new technologies that emerged during that time such as chemical warfare. Similarly, if you take my analogy carefully and paraphrase the question, has the tactics adopted by PAP winning the election failed because of the emerging technologies such as Web 2.0, that comprises of podcasting, videocasting and blogging? That leads to my next point.

The role of internet has been claimed to be one of the important factors that influence the outcome of the election. On the back of my mind, before I came for the forum, my hypothesis is that it is not a galvanizing factor. Given in the US Presidential Elections, the internet was successfully deployed to do fund-raising and spreading the message. It did not change the outcome of the election, because the people who used the internet are already technology buffs compare to the layman who is less tech-savvy. I was not surprised about the results presented in [2]. Tarn How viewed that citizen journalism has been disappointing based on a few factors (i) the real and substantial issues are not discussed much and (ii) there is the lack of engagement.

I believe that there are a few issues that still needs to be addressed:

• First, the credibility of bloggers has been one big question mark to this study. While I agree with the difficulty to benchmark the definition of credible bloggers, the first systematic breakdown of the blogsphere can be classified between anonymous bloggers (Rockson) and those who just blog with their names and credentials (for example, Alex Au in Yawning Bread, Mr Brown and Mr Miyagi). The problem with the ruling party with the internet, is its inability to control what people say and so. It’s a double edged sword because the netizens who chose to be anonymous, ended up viewed as not credible to the discerning voters. The ruling party has often stated their ability to deliver the goods made them the most credible party in Singapore. The irony is that they did not have faith in the electorate to discern the credibility of the anonymous writers in the internet. 
   
• Second, the space that it generated. Can the internet become the alternative to the mainstream media? I find that the proof in the pudding is still out there. With the breakdown of the communication channel, traditional media still takes precedence over internet media. As Tarn How rightfully pointed out, the bloggers need to read the Straits Times first before they draw excerpts from the article to formulate their opinions and views to the blog.

With a preliminary study on the evolving electorate, I believe that we should tread with cautious optimism that the mentality of our electorate has gone beyond bread and butter issues and hold some high and moral values to decide how they cast their votes.