Everything About the Alliance of the 4 Opposition Parties in S’pore for the Next GE

Move, there’s a new squad in town.

Four opposition parties in Singapore have come together to form an alliance for the next General Election (GE). Here’s everything you need to know about it.

Four Opposition Parties in Singapore Unite to Form “People’s Alliance”

On Thursday (1 June), four opposition parties, namely Peoples Voice (PV), the Reform Party (RP), the People’s Power Party (PPP) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), announced that the parties would be coming together to form a new alliance.

Talk about squad goals.

And the name of the four parties’ Alliance is, wait for it… People’s Alliance. It is meant to represent coming together in furtherance of Singaporeans’ interests.

Welcome to “Party Naming 101”: the number one strategy is to find a way to insert “People” into the party’s name, or in this case, the Alliance’s name.

However, before the newly formed Alliance can officially launch or even contest in the next GE, which must be called by 2025, they’ll have to register with the Registry of Societies—which the Alliance is already doing.

According to the parties’ joint statement, the four opposition parties are on the same page concerning “the most critical issues affecting the prosperity of our people and country in the coming decades”.

We hope the service & conservancy charges (S&CC) and GST hikes are on that list of “most critical issues”.

Who knows? With Kenneth Jeyaretnam as the Alliance’s chairman, we might even see the Ridout Road saga on the list. Anyway, if you didn’t already know, the Ridout Road saga isn’t actually a saga at all—Goody Feed’s blue cat explains it here in this video:

And just because the Alliance is newly formed, it doesn’t mean they haven’t done their homework. People’s Alliance already has a manifesto prepared for the next GE, which will be released once registration with the Registry of Societies is complete.

The Alliance adds that they will be gunning for the seats the respective opposition parties had contested in the last GE three years ago.

People’s Alliance Currently Not in Talks with Other Opposition Parties like PSP

However, the formation of the People’s Alliance is merely the first step towards a more united opposition in Singapore.

The problem here is that other opposition parties, such as the Progress Singapore Party (PSP), Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) or Workers’ Party (WP), are not part of the newly formed Alliance.

And it doesn’t seem like these other opposition parties are joining the Alliance anytime soon.

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According to the People’s Alliance secretary-general, Lim Tean, who is also the secretary-general of PV, the People’s Alliance is not currently in talks with other opposition parties.

This was confirmed by PSP’s secretary-general Leong Mun Wai, who shared that although PSP was not in talks with any opposition parties to form an alliance, the party supports such opposition coalitions.

Perhaps PSP didn’t get the memo for the Alliance’s talks because its secretary-general was busy getting on Mr Shanmugam’s nerves in Parliament.

Not Singapore’s Opposition Parties’ First Attempt at Forming Alliance

If you’re wondering why forming the People’s Alliance is such a feat, it’s because previous efforts to form opposition coalitions were all failures.

Since 2015, discussions for an opposition coalition were already underway. Most recently, in 2018, seven opposition parties, including the SDP, PPP, RP, PV, the Democratic Progressive Party, the National Solidarity Party, and the Singaporeans First Party, attempted to form an alliance led by Dr Tan Cheng Bock.

However, all such efforts bore no result until the People’s Alliance came around this year.

Talk about delayed gratification.

Regardless, the formation of the four-party Alliance is one small step forward for Singapore’s political scene. Look out on the parties’ Facebook pages for developments on the People’s Alliance.