Singapore’s ruling party reveals the next prime minister

READERS OFTEN grumble that Singapore’s high commissioner to London (a public servant of great intelligence and charm) wastes inordinate time penning letters of complaint to The Economist, usually over any hint that Singapore is in effect a one-party state. Banyan once argued that the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), with 82 out of 89 elected parliamentary seats, had maintained its uninterrupted rule since 1959 not only by governing competently, but also through gerrymandering, harassing opposition figures, cowing the media, threatening spending cuts in districts that vote against it and “inculcating the absurd notion that its survival and that of Singapore itself are synonymous”. The high commissioner duly responded: Singaporeans vote for the PAP “because it continues to deliver them good government, stability and progress”. One reader promptly called out the “delicious irony”: surely such claims are for the PAP to make, not “the ambassador who represents the very state she insists is not synonymous with its ruling party.”