Is opposition unity a myth?

What national interest are these people talking about? Is it in the national interest to deny voters the choice of good candidates and a good platform just because we want to show how angry we are with the PAP and want to kick them out? If this is the case, isn’t it better for voters to be given a choice so that they could choose, from amongst the many, the candidate most able to express their feelings in Parliament and have the intellect to debate the PAP on policies?

Alas when people call for opposition unity, it is not really about calling for a united front to fight the PAP or asking for the best candidate to be fielded. The idea appears to be for everyone to get out of the fray and leave it to WP to do the battle. This is ironic as the WP has not made overtures to other parties to stay out of the by-election. The claim that only the WP can win in a 1-to-1 fight and that the PAP would win in a multi-cornered fight made the rest feel as spoilers if they were to continue to contest.

Thus when the SDP asked the WP to negotiate, many people were furious. Why should this be so? If there is a genuine interest in opposition unity, why didn’t the supporters of opposition unity push the parties to come to the negotiation table instead of asking one of the parties to stay out without listening what each has to say?

I know what unity or disunity is about. One year before the 2011 general election, I made some attempts to get the opposition parties together for some kind of unity talks. The idea was not to discuss arrangements to avoid multi-cornered fights in the next general election but to get the opposition parties to feel comfortable with each other. It was hoped that through such a meeting that the parties could see their common area of agreement and forge a common platform to offer to Singaporeans as an alternative. The first meeting was attended by the chiefs of the Singapore People’s Party, the National Solidarity Party, the Singapore Democratic Party and the United Singapore Democratic Party.

Subsequent meetings did not materialise because some participants felt that without the WP’s active participation, opposition unity is meaningless.

Politics in Singapore will not mature if political parties continue to shun the idea of coalitions.

All political parties are made up of coalitions of different interest groups or factions, even parties like the Conservatives, the Labour Party and the Liberal-Democratic Party in the United Kingdom. So are many governments, including the government of China. If the opposition parties want to be a serious alternative to the PAP in 2016, then they have to stop behaving like tribal chiefs happy with their tiny fiefdoms and come together. If Singaporeans want to see a united opposition force then they should come together and speak up to force such co-operation with genuine give and take from all sides instead of just supporting one tribal chief.

When the SDP proposed to the WP to work together to find a unity candidate, it was severely criticised. Many observers called the idea “laughable”, “ridiculous”, “hare-brained”, etc. Some even labelled, very unfairly I think, Dr Chee Soon Juan as delusional, mad, bi-polar etc.

Such exaggerated labels and personal attacks merely play into the propaganda of the mainstream media and prevent people from taking an objective and rational look at the proposal. The proposal of a unity candidate may not be as ridiculous as people think.

Each opposition party has its strengths and weakness. If a united front is to be formidable, the strengths must complement each other.

All of us know that the SDP and WP have distinct beliefs and focus. But they share a common belief that the PAP is not doing right by Singapore. With the support of pro-opposition supporters, surely the two parties can find common grounds and explore how they can work together despite their differences. They should, because to all pro-opposition Singaporeans there is only one common foe.

In the world of political governance, coalitions abound. In Germany, for example, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) runs a coalition government with the Free Democrat Party (FDP). Both parties have different ideologies and policies – the CDU is conservative while the FDP is liberal in its orientation – but have found common ground to work for the country's greater good. Even in Malaysia, the Pakatan Rakyat brings together the liberal DAP and the very conservative PAS.

It may well turn out that in the not-too-distant future, Singapore will have to turn to a coalition of parties to form the government where power and responsibilities are shared. If parties cannot work to serve the residents despite their differences, what do we do if an election results in no party garnering more than 50 percent of the seats in Parliament?

Thus I would see SDP’s proposal as an idea to get the opposition parties to learn how to work together. It may have been an idea which was difficult to grasp and easily misunderstood but the principle was that everything should be on the table. Opposition unity should not merely mean meeting once in five years just before an election to parcel out constituencies for contest.

The idea of a unity candidate may be novel and untried, but that does not mean it cannot work. It should be examined rather than ridiculed and dismissed out-of-hand.

If the WP had agreed to meet the SDP and negotiated with an open mind, who knows what the final proposal might look like. But one thing is for sure, it would be one big baby step to true opposition unity for a more accountable government and a better Singapore.