People's Action Party  

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The People's Action Party (PAP) is a centre-left political party in Singapore. The ruling political party since 1959, it has been central to the city-state's political, social, and economic development. At the same time, it has been criticized for heavy-handed laws and policies that suppress dissent and free speech. In the 2006 Singapore general election, the PAP received 66.6% of total votes cast, winning 82 of the 84 elected seats in the Parliament of Singapore. The PAP symbol, red and blue on white, stands for action inside "interracial unity".

2.   The People's Action Party was formed in 1954 by English-educated middle-class professional men who had returned from their university education in the United Kingdom. It first contested the 1955 elections, winning three seats, one by its leader Lee Kuan Yew. The party has controlled the Singapore government ever since it won the 1959 general election, the first election to produce a fully-elected parliament and a cabinet wielding powers of full internal self government. Since 1966, the PAP became the only major political party in Singapore, following the resignation of the Barisan Sosialis (Socialist Front), (a left-wing group that split from the PAP in 1961) after a number of their leaders had been arrested in Operation Coldstore in 1963. Opposition parties have not held more than 4 parliamentary seats since 1984.

3.   Initially adopting a traditionalist Leninist party organization together with a vanguard cadre from its communist-leaning faction, the PAP Executive later expelled the leftist faction in 1958, bringing the ideological basis of the party into the centre. Later, in the 1960s, it moved further to the right. Political power in the party is concentrated in the Central Executive Committee (CEC), led by its Secretary-General. Most of the members in the CEC are also cabinet members. The next lower level committee is the HQ Executive Committee (HQ exco) which performs party's administration and oversees twelve sub-committees.^[1] The party regards ethnic diversity and representation of women as very important.

4.   Since the early years of the PAP's rule, the idea of survival has been a central theme of Singaporean politics. According to Diane Mauzy and R.S. Milne, most analysts of Singapore have discerned four major "ideologies" of the PAP: pragmatism, meritocracy, multiracialism, and Asian values or communitarianism. Although the party has claimed to have 'rejected' what it considers to be Western-style liberal democracy, some analysts have considered this to be merely a political statement because of the heavy utilisation of many aspects of liberal democracy in Singapore's public policy, specifically the welfare state and the recognition of democratic institutions. Professor Hussin Mutalib, however, states that for Lee Kuan Yew "Singapore would be better off without liberal democracy".^[1] Since the 1970s, the PAP has clearly moved to towards neoliberal and pro-market reforms and in 1976, it resigned from the Socialist International, after the Dutch Labour Party had proposed to expel the party.   more... at Wikipedia