GE2020: Democracy joins the queue

Many good things in Singapore have to be queued for, and democracy became one of them yesterday as the nation marked its first pandemic election.

From 8am, voters began queueing at polling stations across the island.

The ongoing Covid-19 crisis rendered this election a socially distant one. Measures meant to keep the electorate safe caused voting hours to stretch way into the night.

Voters were assigned different time bands in which to go to the polls. They queued a metre apart, had their temperatures taken, and were directed to sanitise their hands before and after entering the voting booth. The last hour of voting was reserved for those who were sick or on stay-home notices.

Mr Low Boon Huat, 75, and his wife Heng Siew Khim, 73, were among the first to cast their votes at Chung Cheng High School (Main).

Mr Low said in Mandarin that they showed up early as he was "kiasu" and needed to go open his joss paper shop in Bedok North. The couple added that they felt "very safe and were not inconvenienced in any way" by the extra measures.

But as the day wore on and queues of voters snaked round the block, sometimes into the hundreds, tempers began to fray. The journey to the ballot box could take as little as five minutes and as long as two hours.

At St Gabriel's Secondary School, an elderly man swore at the powers-that-be that he felt had created this situation. "They yaya lah," he added, using the Malay word for "arrogant" and sweating into his polo shirt.

Online, people complained of the long wait, or even being turned away because of overcrowding and told to come back later.

The Elections Department spent the morning issuing a flurry of refutations. Yes, the queue situation was easing as of 11am, but younger voters were reminded to stick to their designated time bands. No, the self-inking pens were not faulty; they were not rendering votes invalid. The requirement for disposable gloves in the voting booths had to be done away with, as they took too long to don.

It rained in fits and starts in the afternoon. The hundred-strong queue outside CHIJ Our Lady of Good Counsel shuffled along through drizzle interspersed with blazing sunshine.

A first-time voter who declined to be named leafed through Leo Tolstoy's Russian epic Anna Karenina while she waited. "It's slow-going," she said of the book, though she could also have been describing her inaugural electoral experience.

Down the street, the Menon family had set up a makeshift booth in their driveway. In it, they had stocked bottled water, packet drinks and snacks for those in the queue to help themselves to, and put up a sign offering to let people use their bathroom.

Housewife Preeta Menon, 34, said her parents, who are in their 70s, had spent 90 minutes queueing in the morning and found it hot and uncomfortable, so they asked their daughters to buy the refreshments for others. "We've gone through four cartons of water so far," she said. "We hope this helps."

Some did not let the long queues dampen their spirits. "I'm excited to exercise my right to democracy," said political science student Gwyneth Lee, 22, a new voter.

Though she has felt a twinge of envy when hearing her parents speak of the rallies of the past, she said it was easy to follow this election on social media. "I grew up with the Internet," she said. "I take my classes on Zoom. It's been really interesting to see how the candidates have shifted to the online sphere."

The sound and fury of the rallies of yore gave way this time round to an election fought mostly online, as candidates tried to woo voters through webinars and social media and exchanged virtual salvos.

The protracted safe distancing measures eventually resulted in voting hours being extended to 10pm, as election officials donned personal protective equipment to deal with sick voters.

The queues vanished. But for supporters of various parties, some of whom gathered at coffee shops determined to listen to the sample counts and results roll in, the moment of truth was on hand. Some sat slumped in defeat. For others, the day dissolved into jubilation.