Background
This was another opportunity for Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong to score a better mandate after PAP's considerably poorer showing in the 1991 election. Two seats in PAP-held Eunos and Toa Payoh GRCs were vacated after the death of MP, Dr Tay Eng Soon and inauguration of former Deputy PM Ong Teng Cheong as Singapore's fifth and first elected President in 1993 respectively. The former GRC, which twice saw narrow wins against WP, was dispersed into neighbouring constituencies.
Meanwhile, the main opposition, the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) was facing serious internal strife.
SDP Member of Parliament and former leader Chiam See Tong sued his party's central executive committee, including its new leader Dr Chee Soon Juan and one of its MPs, chairman Ling How Doong, for defamation, and won. Prior to nomination day, Chiam resigned from SDP and crossed over to its splinter party, Singapore People's Party. Two opposition candidates who came under heaviest fire from PAP were Dr Chee and Tang Liang Hong, who was standing on the WP ticket with its secretary-general J. B. Jeyaretnam. Tang was accused by PAP of being an anti-Christian Chinese chavunist. Group Representation Constituencies (GRC) went up from four to between four and six seats each. A National Solidarity Party team was disqualified from Tampines GRC after one candidate was found to have his name struck off the electoral rolls for not voting in 1991. For the first time, a Nominated MP - listed company director Chia Shi Teck - ran in an election.
Read more about this topic: Singapore General Election, 1997
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)