Singaporean general election, 2001

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3 November 2001

2006 →

84 seats (only 29 seats contested) to the Parliament of Singapore
43 seats needed for a majority
1 NCMP seat offered

Turnout

94.6%

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Goh Chok Tong	Chiam See Tong	Low Thia Khiang
Party	PAP	SDA	WP
Leader since	1992	2001	2001
Leader's seat	Marine Parade GRC	Potong Pasir SMC	Hougang SMC
Last election	81 seats, 65.0%	None	1 seat + 1 NCMP, 14.2%
Seats won	82	1 + 1 NCMP	1
Seat change	1	1	0
Popular vote	470,765	75,248	19,060
Percentage	75.3%	12.0%(total) / 27.6%(valid)	3.0%(total) / 39.3%(valid)
Swing	10.3%	12.0%/27.6%	11.2%/1.7%

Results:

People's Action Party

Workers' Party of Singapore

Singapore Democratic Alliance

Prime Minister before election

Goh Chok Tong
PAP

Elected Prime Minister

Goh Chok Tong
PAP

The Singaporean parliamentary general elections of 2001 were held on 3 November. The People's Action Party, the incumbent ruling party, won 82 out of 84 seats in the election, including 55 walkovers. Due to the large number of uncontested seats, only 675,306 of the 2,036,923 eligible voters (33.2%) actually voted.

The ruling PAP was facing one of the toughest hurdles in its history. Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong originally intended for the election to take place in 2002, but in late 2001, Singapore was saddled with the worst economic crisis since independence, after the events of the 11 September attacks in the United States.

For the first time since 1963, a formal political umbrella emerged from within the opposition. The four-party Singapore Democratic Alliance was established with Chiam See Tong as chief, consisting of the Singapore People's Party he led, which was the leader party, National Solidarity Party (NSP), PKMS and Singapore Justice Party (SJP). NSP provided the bulk of nine candidates, SPP four and PKMS providing a required minority candidate.

Former WP Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam (J. B. Jeyaretnam), who lost his seat after being declared a bankrupt owing to lawsuits by PAP leaders, resigned from the party, citing disagreements with the present leadership. Sole WP MP Low Thia Khiang took over as secretary-general.

This election saw the end of four-member GRCs and a shortest campaigning period of 17 days after opening of the register of electors. A seat had been vacated in 1999 after the conviction of PAP MP Choo Wee Khiang over commercial crimes, but no by-election was held as the seat was within a GRC. Under the law, an entire electoral constituency, be it GRC or SMC, has to be vacated before a by-election is required, as was done during the Marine Parade GRC by-election of 1992.

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Wikipedia