People's Action Party (Singapore)

People's Action Party
Party leader	Khaw Boon Wan
Secretary General	Lee Hsien Loong
founding	November 21, 1954
Headquarters	PCF Building 57B New Upper Changi Road # 01-1402 Singapore 463057
Youth organization	Young PAP
Alignment	Catch-all party , national conservatism , Economic liberalism , third way , autocracy , secularism ,
Colours)	White Blue Red
Parliament seats	82/101
Website	www.pap.org.sg

The People's Action Party (abbreviated PAP , Chinese  人民 行動 黨  /  人民 行动 党 , Pinyin Rénmín Xíngdòngdǎng , Tamil மக்கள் செயல் கட்சி , Malay Parti Tindakan Rakyat , translated 'People's Action Party') is a conservative political party in Singapore , even if it is part of the Socialist International was. The People's Action Party has been the ruling party in Singapore since 1959.

history

The party was founded in 1954 by middle-class men trained in England who had returned to their homeland from Britain . In the 1955 election, in which 25 of the 32 seats could be elected, the PAP won three seats, the future Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew got one of them. Since the 1959 election, the PAP has determined the government.

Between 1963 and 1965 Singapore belonged to Malaysia, making the PAP a Malaysian party. However, the prospect that the PAP could play an important political role in the country angered the ruling United Malays National Organization and the Malaysian belief in the Ketuanan Melayu .

Political orientation

The PAP advocates meritocracy and is more of a pragmatic than an ideological party. She rejects a liberal democracy in the western sense as well as the socialist welfare state . On the other hand, she advocates the greatest possible economic freedom, East Asian values ​​and emphasizes law and order.

Importance for Singapore

Since 1959 the party has dominated politics in the parliamentary system of government of the Southeast Asian city-state. It was thus an extremely important factor for the economic and social development of the country into an industrial nation . Opposition parties have accused the PAP of unfair aiding and abetting by passing legislation in parliament to strengthen its role as the dominant force.

Successes in the parliamentary elections

In every election since 1959, the PAP won an overwhelming majority of the seats. In the years from 1968 to 1980 she even occupied all the seats in parliament.

In the parliamentary elections in 2006 , the PAP won 82 out of 84 possible seats, in 2011 81 out of 87 seats and in 2015 83 out of 89 seats, although in 2015 it won only 69.9% of the vote. The PAP owes this above all to the majority voting rights and the tailoring of the constituencies, which the PAP benefits.

literature

• Hussin Mutalib: Parties and Politics: A Study of Opposition Parties and the PAP in Singapore . Marshall Cavendish Academic (2nd ed.), Singapore 2004.

Web links

• Singapore People's Action Party website
• Official website of the electoral authority of Singapore: results of past elections

Individual evidence

1. ^ Youth organization of the PAP: History ( Memento of the original from March 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ^ Page of the PAP: Party history
3. ^ Official results ( memento of April 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) of the 2006 election
4. ^ Official results ( memento of April 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) of the 2011 election
5. ↑ 2015 Parliamentary Elections Results ( Memento of September 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on September 15, 2015.
6. ↑ Till Fähnders: Alone against the most powerful man in the state. A blogger challenges Prime Minister Lee in the Singapore election . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 11, 2015, p. 3.