The People’s Action Party (PAP) of Singapore has been the dominant political party since 1959. The politics of Singapore take the form of a parliamentary republic and the Prime Minister is the head of the government.
The 2015 Singaporean general election was held on September 11th to form Singapore’s Parliament. The previous Parliament was dissolved on August 25, 2015 by President Tony Tanon on the advice of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, and candidates were nominated on 1 September.
The 2015 election was the first since Singapore’s independence in 1965 which saw all seats contested. PAP won 83 of the 89 seats.
Singapore has been accused of being a social democracy. The Economist Intelligence Unit says Singapore is a “hybrid” country, with authoritarian and democratic elements. Freedom House does not consider Singapore an “electoral democracy” and ranks the country as “partly free”.
Reporters Without Borders ranked Singapore #136 of more than 178 countries listed in the 2010 Worldwide Press Freedom Index.
The ruling Party’s policies contain aspects of socialism as does mainland China, which includes government-owned public housing constituting the majority of real estate and the dominance of government controlled companies in the local economy.
For 31 years from 1959 to 1990, Lee Kuan Yew ruled Singapore as its prime minister. He died March 23, 2015. Imagine the United States with the same president and party in power for more than three decades.
Chinese make up 76.8 percent of the population and according to a comment left for another post, the Chinese mostly vote for the PAP keeping Lee Kuan Yew’s party in power.
The CIA says unemployment is 2.2% and there is no information from the World Bank, the CIA, the World Health Organization, or from Global Edge on how many live in poverty in Singapore.
Mr. Biao.com says, “Singapore has no beggars, because they will be picked up by the police. … We have no poverty, because Singapore has no official poverty line.”
Continued with Thailand on January 22, 2015 with Part 4 or return to Part 2
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the unique love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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