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How to stay healthy at 70? Here’s the PAP’s recipe
Keeping to core values, while adapting to a changing electorate, has kept the PAP dominant. But the disconnect between the elite and the masses can be a challenge.
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Each election sees a wave of new PAP candidates, as about a quarter of the party’s MPs step down to make way for new faces.
ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
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This month marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Action Party on Nov 21, 1954. It has been in power since 1959, when Singapore was a self-governing British colony. The party led the country to independence in 1965, and then embarked on a remarkable journey of bringing the Republic from Third World to First – turning mudflats into a metropolis, in the words of founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, a phrase that has become part of the national narrative.
The PAP has won every general election since 1959. In the last election in 2020, it won 61 per cent of the votes and 83 out of 93 seats.
