Disinterest in Presidential Elections

2011 will be always remembered as the year when I get to vote THRICE in one year since I reached voting age: UK Referendum, General Election and the upcoming presidential election.

But this time round, I am disinterested in the presidential election. Why? Simply because I feel that the president of Singapore has no real power and influence over the government, no matter what the candidates may claim. Why do I feel so?

Let’s put partisan politics out-of-the-way, since the president is supposed to be above partisan politics. Thus, one can generally classify the candidates into two camps: the “pro-establishment camp” and the “anti-establishment camp”. Even one who is almost blind can see that these two distinctions are merely a retooling of the terms “pro-government”/PAP and “opposition” but since the government doesn’t like to associate partisan play with this election, let’s keep our terminologies in check.

On the pro-establishment side, we have one candidate: Dr. Tony Tan. On the other side, we have the rest. Suppose Dr. Tony Tan wins the election, which I find highly likely: he will simply continue Mr SR Nathan’s role of rubber stamping the government policies and being a smiling face of Singapore for overseas delegates. Suppose one of the other candidates win: we might have a more lively scene where they make loads of noise in the press about the government policies but ultimately, he has no executive power over the cabinet and the Prime Minister can simply ignore him and carry on with what he wants to do.

This is why I don’t really care about the presidential elections.
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Let me, for a moment, be a very unscientific pundit on how the results will turn out. I believe Dr. Tony Tan will win but the other candidates will have significant number of votes when added up together albeit insufficient for them to win the race on their own. This is because I feel that many people, like myself, has this perception (whether right, or not) that the president has no power. And so they will be more willing to vote for the “anti-establishment camp” since the ramifications of electing one to become a president will likely have no effect on our country. But because there will be THREE such candidates, the votes will be split and eventually, each candidate will not be enough to win the race.