RI Post-war Singapore Part 3 Slides (up to 1959) 2020

Constitutions and Elections The ‘battle’ for independence and leadership of Singapore

Continuing the story – People were starting to mobilise themselves to make an impact on Singapore – Strikes and riots made their voices heard, but rarely achieved sustained progress – With political parties, we start to see a real shift towards independence

Overview of Topic In this topic, we are studying how Singapore gradually progressed towards independence from the perspectives of the various political parties and leaders By the end of this topic, you should be able to: – Recognise specific political parties and their ideologies – Know the actions, vision and characteristics of the key personnel of these parties – Understand the British perspective and their key considerations for merdeka

A Game of Seats – Battlegrounds turn to control of seats in the Legislative Assembly (or Parliament) – Fierce competition in three landmark general elections (1948, 1955, 1959) – Winners of these ‘battles’ get to implement their vision and policies for Singapore

Prologue: A New Vote A long time ago in a colony not so far away…

Let (our) people vote – In 1946, British planned for a new Legislative Assembly with 6 out of 22 officials to open to the 1948 general election – Singapore’s first election! – Only 200,000 eligible voters as British subjects and only 22,395 actually voted

1948 General Election – Only 2% of population voted – 6 seats distributed across 4 constituencies – SPP won 3 out of the 6 seats, first political party in Singapore elected into government – Remaining 3 won by independents

Introducing our first character: Progressive Party – Formed in 1947 – Conservative party, wanted to cooperate with British for gradual change – Led by English-educated lawyers John Laycock, C. C. Tan, and Nasir Mallal – Had support of English- educated professionals

Connect-the-dots: Why did the SPP win? Is this result representative of the people?

1951 General Election – Number of seats increased to 9 and 25,065 voted – New challenger, Labour Party, led by Lim Yew Hock, more radical and left-leaning – SPP still won a majority of 6 out of 9 seats; LP won 2 – Voters still conservative about independence