All good things come to an end, and in little Singapore it is evident that the long rule of the People’s Action Party is drawing to a close.
It may take a couple of election cycles, perhaps 10 to 15 years, but as most political pundits, including many affiliated with the PAP, now openly admit, it is a prospect that appears inevitable.
And for many native-born Singaporeans – who, thanks to the party’s immigration policies, now face becoming a minority in their own country – it brings a sense of astonishment and a kind of thrilling trepidation.
After all, this is the party formed by that heroic battleaxe Lee Kuan Yew and his “Old Guard” coterie back in the 1950s, and which is now helmed by his equally savvy son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
It is a party that has won back-to-back elections for more than half a century and just as consistently has formed governments that have topped surveys as the cleanest and most efficient in the world.
So what has gone wrong?
Well, the overlong tenure in office has bred arrogance and a measure of complacency, which in turn has allowed corruption and incompetence to become shockingly common.
It is no longer a surprise to hear about high-ranking Singaporean officials taking bribes, or to learn about security lapses and chronic breakdowns in the public transport system.
The fact that PAP ministers overseeing the decline continued to pay themselves the world’s highest salaries out of the public purse made more and more Singaporeans start to turn away from the party.
That was reflected in the stunning reversals suffered by the PAP in the 2011 general election and the near loss of its candidate in the subsequent presidential vote.
After these setbacks, the PAP made cosmetic changes and tried to put on a happy face, but it did little good. In a by-election last year, the former safe seat of Punggol East fell to the opposition in an anti-PAP swing of 13.5 percent.
Soon afterward, social commentator Catherine Lim wrote an open letter to PM Lee, saying, “We are in the midst of a crisis where the people no longer trust their government, and the government no longer cares about regaining their trust.”
She accused Mr Lee of heading an “all-powerful, vindictive government” which, she said, “has already widened the original disconnect between the PAP and the people into an almost unbridgeable chasm”.
Since then, the disconnect has widened even further, and a slew of nominally pro-PAP establishment figures has begun to muse about the prospect of the party’s demise.
Last month, the flamboyant businessman Ho Kwon Ping, the chair of Banyan Tree Holdings, which runs high-end hotels and resorts across the region, got into the act.
A former journalist turned tycoon, Mr Ho spoke at length about how the PAP might forfeit its stranglehold on parliament within 15 years and could lose power a decade after that.
Aside from local factors, he bolstered his argument by reference to global trends showing that ruling parties in democracies historically lapse after 50 to 75 years; the PAP is now smack in the middle of that range.
He claimed that almost everyone he knew had concurred, except about “how many years it would take before the PAP would lose an election and how many terms it would stay out of power before bouncing back”.
It was a pretty radical statement, especially by a Singaporean whose lucrative business has thrived under PAP rule and whose wife once served in parliament.
Certainly, it suggests that internal party splits, ongoing corruption scandals, stagnant growth and a loss of market competitiveness – all reasons Mr Ho gave for a potential early exit from power by the PAP – are well founded.
Toss in growing foreign worker problems and interracial divisiveness that led to a lethal riot in the city-state’s Little India district last December, and the government’s woes appear perfectly understandable.
Still, Mr Ho did moderate his scalding comments by saying the PAP would likely prevail in the next election or two and thus overtake the record of 71 years that Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party clocked up in power.
He claimed this was because the PAP has not yet exhibited signs of moral exhaustion and the sort of incipient decay seen in other long-ruling political parties.
Of course, if Mr Ho had been braver he would not have used far-off Mexico as his comparative, but rather other entrenched parties in the region, such as those in Laos, Malaysia and Vietnam.
They have certainly shown signs of moral and operational decrepitude and largely survive in power by curtailing opposition voices – as, of course, Singapore has always done, most ruthlessly under Lee Kuan Yew.
Mr Ho also took pains to cover his backside by claiming that despite a few scandals involving mid-level bureaucrats, there was no evidence of mounting corruption in Singapore’s public life.
