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From: rbutterworth@orchid.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: N.B. Elections
Message-ID: <11233@orchid.waterloo.edu>
Date: Sun, 18-Oct-87 15:22:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: orchid.11233
Posted: Sun Oct 18 15:22:54 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Oct-87 23:40:16 EDT
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The republic of Singapore has had a similar problem for the last
25 years or so.  Although they do not have a one-party political
system, the ruling party consistently won every single seat in
the national legislature.

They finally changed their constitution so that if the opposition
parties do not elect at least 3 representatives, those seats will
be filled by the opposition candidates that received the greatest
percentage of the popular vote, providing that this percentage is
at least fifteen.

I think (but could be misremembering) that in at least one recent
election only one of these three seats could be filled because no
other opposition candidate received the necessary fifteen percent
of the popular vote.

Singapore has very little agriculture, virtually no natural
resources, and not 2 but 4 official languages, yet it has an
extremely stable and popular government and is one of the
richest countries in the western Pacific.

Their success depends to a large extent on free international trade,
but it has cost them any hope of having any significant form of
domestic arts or culture.

Our own government seems ready to abandon domestic arts and culture,
in the name of free trade, but I doubt very much that it will bring
about the same degree of industrial prosperity, and I'm certain that
it won't bring about the same degree of government popularity.