Election
The senior vote
Courting them with 'goodies' recognises their unhappiness. Lucky for PAP it didn't go along with an idea suggested 12 years ago. By Seah Chiang Nee.
Jan 13, 2005

That restructuring has hit Singapore's elderly (economic definition here: any one over 45) the hardest has become patently clear, shown by the government allocating the biggest bag of goodies to them.

Some media people call them the crucial swing vote in the coming election. The expectation (at least until the perks started to fly) was that many of them would vote against the government.

That got me thinking. There must be some old-timers in the PAP who must be saying, "Thank God, we didn't give an extra vote to Singaporeans between 35-60 years who were married and had children!"

Mr. Lee Kuan Yew had suggested this in 1994 to replace the one-man-one-vote system.

Since the 1984 election when 12.4% voters abandoned the PAP and went to the opposition, Lee had noticed the young people were becoming more "adventurous" with their vote.

He had thought up this idea to counter their "irresponsible" voting.

Family people, he argued, were more mature with their choice because it would affect their spouses and children, and so should be given a greater weight.

Childless, unmarried liberals were, he believed, less worried about things going wrong.

His proposal obviously stirred strong reservations from his peers because it was quietly dropped.

The opposition was, as far as I know, based on the following arguments: -

· There was no guarantee that the elderly would vote PAP any more than the youths would vote against it. In fact Mr. JB Jeyaretnam, Workers Party leader, had won in Anson with a largely aged vote. With two votes each, anti-PAP seniors could wrack havoc on the fortunes of the ruling party.

· It could lead to a generational conflict between the young generation and elderly citizens over relocation of state resources, as was happening in some Western societies. The aged would vote for more retirement facilities over more spending for schools, for example. With two votes they would win overwhelmingly.

Not to mention, of course, that the ruling party would lose plenty of support from younger voters if this had been pushed through.

By Seah Chiang Nee