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30 A New Dawn in PAP-Malay Relations?
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350 A New Dawn in PAP-Malay Relations? LILY ZUBAIDAH RAHIM Relations between the People’s Action Party (PAP) government and Malay community were characteristically fraught with tension during Lee Kuan Yew’s tenure as Prime Minister. For both parties, the brief but tumultuous political experiences of merger and separation engendered disappointment, alienation and insecurity. Malay alienation can be attributed to the PAP government’s minimalist approach towards addressing their persisting socio-economic and educational marginalisation, relative to the other ethnic communities, despite the existence of Section 152 of the Singapore Constitution.1 The 1979 New Education Policy’s early streaming policy has relegated many socially disadvantaged Singaporeans, of which Malays are disproportionately represented, to the less prestigious academic and technical streams and rendered more problematic their upward socio-economic mobility. It was only in 1981 that the state sponsored ethnic self-help body Mendaki (Council for the Education of Muslim Children) was established to address the community’s marginalisation. By the end of Lee’s tenure in 1990, the socioeconomic and educational disparities between the Malay and Chinese communities had not narrowed in many critical areas such as university enrolments, average monthly household income and ownership of private houses and apartments.2 Lee’s belief in and celebration of supposed Chinese cultural and genetic endowments, which he considered exceptional, was unhelpful in narrowing the political distance between the PAP government and the Malays.Revelling in Singapore’s economic achievements,which have surpassed neighbouring states, Lee has likened the predominantly Chinese-populated island in Southeast Asia as akin to a “Venice in the Middle-Ages” and referred to it as a “Shining beacon in the midst of darkness” and as an “Oasis in a desert”.3 He once told the BBC World Service that indigenous Southeast Asians were “jolly people, they sing, they dance” and that these characteristics were “unsettling to the local (Chinese) population”.4 Such perspectives have served to rationalise the persistent relative socioeconomic and educational marginality of the Malay community as culturally and biologically pre-determined. 30 A NEW DAWN IN PAP-MALAY RELATIONS? 351 Laden with racial overtones population and immigration policies—commonly referred to in the 1980s as policies geared towards “maintaining the racial balance”—have been tailored to maintain the numerical dominance of the Chinese community. This preoccupation was reinforced when Chinese fertility rates dropped below replacement level. If this trend had been allowed to persist, the higher Malay fertility rate would have facilitated a rise in their numerical proportion beyond their current 14% of the total population, with political and electoral ramifications that would no doubt have been a source of concern to the PAP leadership. In 1984, Lee acknowledged in Parliament that the PAP had clearly lost the Malay ground in the 1968 General Election, the first after Singapore’s separation from Malaysia in 1965.5 He also claimed in 1987 that the PAP had never won more than 50% of the Malay vote.6 Consistent with these assertions, PAP candidates performed poorly in the 1988 elections in constituencies where Malays were relatively well represented.Weak Malay electoral support for the PAP has been counteracted by the 1989 ethnic residential quotas in public housing estates. The quotas have ensured that the Malays do not constitute more than 20% of the total population in any constituency. The Chinese quota of 80% assures that they remain the numerically and electorally dominant community in all constituencies. While the quotas are supposedly a means of promoting ethnic integration and preserving Singapore’s multiracial society, they have effectively prevented the Malay community from strongly determining the electoral outcome in any constituency. Shifting Rationale for the GRC The introduction of the Group Representation Constituency (GRC) scheme in 1988 made it even more problematic for opposition parties to mount a serious challenge to the electoral and political hegemony of the PAP.To date,no opposition party has successfully contested a GRC. The PAP’s agenda of electoral dominance was made more apparent by the expansion of the GRC team from four to six and the incongruously divergent reasons given for the growing number of GRCs. In 1996, the GRC expansion was justified on the grounds that it would allow GRCs to better tie in with Community Development Councils.7 Yet not long after the 2006 elections, Senior Minister Goh acknowledged that the GRC allowed for easier recruitment into the PAP and relatively smooth passage for high-flying rooky PAP candidates.8 Many members of the ethnic...