Tag: Singapore Politics

November 28, 2010

VOTE FOR ME: Elections Posters in Singapore (1)

Here’s a sure sign that the general elections has begun: when elections posters start popping up all over your neighbourhood! Besides rallies and media reports, posters are the most visible form of an election campaign. These traditionally come in three forms, depicting the party’s logo, its manifesto, and the candidate contesting. This is a set from the People’s Action Party (PAP) General Elections campaign in 1980.

In the first of this two-part post, I’ll be looking at the manifesto posters of the parties since 1972. It starts from Singapore’s second post-independence election as it is the earliest poster I could find in the National Archive’s POSTERS Database, where I have got all the images from. In this 1972 poster of candidate Lim Kim San, the three elements of party logo, manifesto, and candidate are all rolled into one, but by the next election in 1976, posters came in three separate forms as depicted above.

As with most visual culture for the public here, a unique element of election posters here is the use of Singapore’s four official languages. These are 1980 posters from PAP’s “The Right Choice” campaign.

Over the years, the PAP has used various visual forms to express its platform of material progress in its manifesto posters. The 1980 poster depicts its oft-used rhetoric of past versus progress, and so do the posters used in the next two elections of 1984 and 1988.

In 1988, the PAP also took advantage of the official launch of Singapore’s MRT system that year to come up a smart campaign poster.

The PAP’s election posters though the 1990s became more dull under the leadership of Goh Chok Tong.

In contrast, posters of opposition party The Workers Party’s seemed to capture the voice of its leader J B Jeyaretnam, the first opposition candidate to break the PAP monopoly in the 1981 by-elections. WP’s slogan of “Power To The People” was easily translated into a powerful visual rhetoric as first seen in this 1991 poster. However, the photo used seems to be a stock photo of people in a Western country.

1991 WP 1

For the next elections in 1997, WP improved on this poster. The Chinese version with its forceful calligraphy matches memories of WP candidate Tang Liang Hong’s controversial speeches that got him labelled by the PAP candidates as a ‘Chinese Chauvinist’. After the elections, he got sued for defamation and has since fled Singapore.

Despite these highly memorable posters, the WP was unable to convince the people to power it into power, garnering only one Parliamentary seat in both elections. Perhaps, this was why it toned down its visual rhetoric in the subsequent elections. Moreover, the rise of Low Thia Khiang to become leader of the WP and the ousting of the fiery J B Jeyaretnam also ushered in a quieter form of politics as seen in these 2001 and 2006 posters.

The PAP has also adopted a more sophisticated visual language with its manifesto posters in the new millennium. One reason for this change seems to be the availability of technology such as Photoshop and cheap colour printing. As seen in the 2001 poster of Goh Chok Tong and the 2006 poster of current prime minister Lee Hsein Loong, these are clearly creations of the times, and they’ve been crafted to depict the PAP’s belief that the way to govern Singapore is through a strong leadership backed by the support of the people.

In the next post, I’ll be looking at the posters depicting the party’s logo and their candidates, including some whacky ones from independent candidates!

September 13, 2010

Talking Back To The State

National campaigns are a big part of life in Singapore. Even before independence, the government had began using all sorts of campaigns to create model citizens and to shape the city to its vision.

In the 1960s, Singaporeans were exhorted to eat wheat when rice was in short supply. The 1970s a Speak Mandarin campaign was introduced to encourage the Chinese community to use Mandarin instead of dialects. This was then followed by the National Courtesy Campaign in the 1980s where Singaporeans were told to be courteous to one another. Campaigns died down a little from the 1990s, but a significant one in recent times was after the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) when Singaporeans were encouraged to ‘Step Out’ and resume their daily lives.

A Straits Times article in 2003 counted some 200 documented campaigns between 1958 and 1995, and anyone in Singapore since the 1980s would have been exposed to an average of more than 10 national campaigns a year! But such campaigns have largely been a one-way communication from the state. A new exhibition, Campaign City: Life in Posters, finally gives voice to the target audience. Ten local artists were asked to re-interpret a national campaign that they remembered in the form of a poster, an essential marketing collateral before the day of television and the Internet.

Ian Woo’s response (left) to the 1970s campaign against the hippies culture (right) that even saw musician Kitaro sent home when he came to perform in Singapore with long hair.

While artists like Michelle Fun, :phunk studio, eeshaun, and Ian Woo re-appropriated old campaign posters, others like Messy Msxi, Zhao Renhui and Clare Ryan created new work in response to the original campaign slogans. The 1970s ‘Two is Enough’ campaign, which encouraged Singaporean families to stop at two babies, was the most popular campaign as Justin Lee, ampulets, and Randy Chan each did a poster for it. This campaign is arguably one of the nation’s few successes, so much so, that low fertility has become a problem for Singapore today.

While the posters are personal responses, when read as a collection, there seems to be an underlying sense of ambivalence and pessimism about these campaigns. Randy’s poster (below) was especially memorable, visualising the many campaigns in the form of a condom — a critique on how a protective nanny state not only denied fertility but life in this city too.

Yet, one cannot deny the iconic value the old campaign posters have left in our visual culture. They may never have been very effective in moulding society and its people in the way it was meant to, but it has certainly helped shape how we see this city.

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Campaign City: Life in Posters
9 Sep – 15 Oct
Tue-Sun, 2pm-8pm
Evil Empire, 48 Niven Road

August 10, 2010

First Book: Divercity Singapore

Divercity Singapore: A cartoon history of immigration is a new book that tells the Singapore story through the people who have helped transform this island from a fishing community to a modern metropolis — immigrants. I’ve been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to write and research this book with cartoonist Morgan Chua, and with the support of my publisher/editor Cherian George. It’s now available at most local bookstores for a retail price of S$10.90. Click here to find out more about the book!