Parliamentary elections in Singapore 1984
On 22. December 1984 in Singapore were parliamentary elections held. The result was a victory for the People's Party , which won 77 of the 79 seats, with an opposition candidate elected to parliament for the first time since 1963. Without the 30 undisputed constituencies, the turnout was 95.6%, with 63.2% of the entire electorate casting their vote.
background
In his 1983 National Day rally speech, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew lamented that falling birth rates and large numbers of graduates who remain single or fail to marry their intellectual equality could lead to a shrinking talent pool in Singapore. The PAP government then started the " Graduate Mother Scheme " to attract graduates with incentives to marry. These are said to have caused a big drop in PAP's support for this GE, and its vote share dropped more than 10% to below 70%, the largest drop and lowest for PAP since the 1963 general election. For the Havelock seat of 1983 vacated after the death of Treasury Secretary Hon Sui Sen, there was no by-election as the constituency is being reorganized and merged with the Delta constituency. PM Lee's son Lee Hsien Loong (who later became the nation's third (and current) Prime Minister) made his debut at the Teck Ghee headquarters while the PAP stalwarts Dr. Goh Keng Swee and Ong Pang Boon resigned. In the only election out of several previous and subsequent elections, the turnout remained unchanged. The Secretary General of the Workers' Party of Singapore (WP), JB Jeyaretnam , successfully retained the Anson constituency with a majority increase, while the Singapore Democratic Party with the victory of Chiam See Tong, the only member state of Potong Pasir for the next 26 years up 2011, made her first entry into parliament. A new system for non-constituency MPs has been introduced, offering between three and six seats, the exact number set by the President of Singapore, to the unsuccessful opposition candidates with the best results who receive at least 15% of the vote if one Party wins all seats, deducting one NCMP seat for each elected opposition MP. The opposition parties opposed the system of misleading voters, believing that they could have opposition MPs without voting for them. WP's MPD Nair was the first to be offered but rejected. The offer was then directed to Tan Chee Kien of Singapore United Front, who was also denied and no further offers were made.
