GE2015: Three-cornered fight may impact NCMP selection

On Nomination Day (1 Sep), much attention was focused on the confirmed three-cornered fights in the Bukit Batok, MacPherson and Radin Mas Single-Member Constituencies (SMCs) in the upcoming General Election (GE) 2015.

Just like in past parliamentary elections, it was a scenario that opposition parties had strenuously tried to avoid in this GE. A three-cornered fight would split the vote share among opposition candidates and favour a candidate from the ruling People’s Action Party, they said.

But as mentioned in the Yahoo Singapore article published on Nomination Day, the opposition’s concerns about the vote split in the only three-way contest in Punggol East SMC in GE2011 eventually became a moot point.

PAP’s Michael Palmer secured 54.54 per cent of the votes cast and his nearest opponent, the Workers’ Party's Lee Li Lian, wouldn’t have been able to defeat him even if she had scooped up all the “opposition votes” garnered by the Singapore Democratic Alliance’s Desmond Lim. Hypothetically, she would have only secured a maximum vote share of 45.46 per cent (41.01 per cent + 4.45 per cent). Lee eventually became Member of Parliament by winning in a four-cornered fight in the 2013 by-election for the same ward, securing 54.5 per cent of the votes, after Palmer resigned over an extra-marital affair.

Peh Shing Huei, an author and political and media consultant, also argued the same point in a commentary, saying that since Singapore’s independence in 1965, multi-cornered fights had had no “material impact on the result” in parliamentary elections. He listed five case studies of GEs and by-elections held between 1972 and 1997, and one case study of the presidential election in 2011 .

It remains to be seen if similar voting patterns of such bouts might recur in future GEs.

Where a three-cornered fight may matter is in the deliberation process for the “consolation prize” of Non-Constituency Member of Parliament, a unique feature of Singapore’s parliamentary system that was introduced in 1984.

The NCMP seats had been offered to the “best losers” at past GEs who had attained the highest share of votes cast among the losing opposition candidates, whether they were contesting in an SMC or a Group Representation Constituency (GRC).

The Constitution was amended in 2010 to allow for an allotment of up to nine NCMPs so long as the number of opposition candidates elected into Parliament was less than nine. In other words, there will be a total of nine opposition MPs and/or NCMPs in the next Parliament, as was the case in the recently dissolved 12th Parliament.

In the past, opposition parties had derided the scheme, saying that NCMPs were “toothless” as they had limited voting rights in Parliament. In fact, no NCMP entered Parliament after GE1984 as two opposition parties had rejected the single NCMP seat offered. In subsequent GEs, despite reservations among some of them, the “best losers” had taken up the allotted NCMP seats.

In GE 2011, three NCMP seats were offered to the “best losers”, and SPP’s Lina Chiam (contesting in Potong Pasir SMC), WP’s Yee Jenn Jong (Joo Chiat SMC) and Gerald Giam (part of WP’s East Coast GRC team) took them up. Lee’s hypothetical vote share of 45.46 per cent was below that of Chiam and Yee, who had secured 49.64 per cent and 48.98 per cent, respectively. Significantly, it was above that garnered by the WP’s East Coast GRC team, which clinched 45.17 per cent of the votes cast. The difference between Lee's hypothetical vote share and the WP's East Coast GRC team's vote share was a mere 0.29 percentage point.

If the three-cornered fight didn’t happen in 2011, and Lee secured the aforementioned vote share, she would have been offered the NCMP seat instead of Giam. Perhaps WP treasurer Eric Tan, who was part of the East Coast GRC team, would not have resigned over Giam being chosen as NCMP instead of him. Perhaps the previous Parliament would have a different MP in Punggol East after the Palmer Affair instead of Lee if she were to have stayed on as NCMP and not compete in the ward’s by-election that she won. Perhaps, perhaps. Such fine margins might have changed the course of Singapore’s parliamentary history of recent years if SDA’s Lim did not become the “spoiler”.

A scan of the results of past multi-cornered fights in GEs from 1984 to 2006, however, showed that even the “best losers” in such contests wouldn’t have been given the allotted NCMP seats if they were to add the opposition votes. In the final tally, all of them would have secured notional vote shares that were less than those of subsequently chosen NCMPs and even the second “best losers” in one-on-one contests.

Come this GE2015, the outcome of one or more of the three-cornered fights in Bukit Batok, MacPherson and Radin Mas SMCs might once again conjure up such “what if” hypotheses similar to that in GE2011. It would lend credence to the rationale of the opposition to avoid such contests again in future elections.

Given how a wafer-thin margin in an election can potentially affect the deliberation process to choose an NCMP, it is a timely reminder to all voters that in GE2015, every “X” that they mark on their voting slips counts.