first a quick one: USA is destined for trouble in November: if Trump wins re-election, the next four years will be worse than the past four; if he loses, his fans will march with guns;
assuming they do no more than marching and shouting slogans, then fine; trump might say he does not accept the result, that Democrats cheated, that China/ Russia caused his loss, that ... but this by itself is not a problem - most people in america/ world are now used to not
taking trump seriously; however if he incites followers to violence, there is no telling how it would end; for example, if he says while inciting his people that his loss was China's fault, would his fans actually start shooting asian looking people in the street? or they might just march to local Democratic Party campaign headquarters and shoot people celebrating their victory? we simply dont know
now my dire warning about Singapore:
I have said before that PAP campaigns badly: see old comment
PAP has been winning elections for many decades, so people might find my comment rather hard to believe; be as that may, its loss of Sengkang in the 2020 election was due to its very poor handling of two events involving workers party candidates in that particular constituency: Jamus Lim's much praised "we dont want to deny PAP a mandate, just not give it a blank cheque", and the much more damaging Raeesah Khan 2018 social media comments.
The first one is relatively easy to deal with: PAP should have said it has never sought a blank cheque, but always exercised power with restraint and prudence, yada yada yada ... The second one is more subtle; first, one need to note that most voters have not actually read what she wrote. It is necessary to repeat them and explain why these were wrong; for example, the City Harvest Church officials did not steal 50M and got off scot free: 6 of them went to jail, for varying periods of time, and the money they misdirected was restituted, so they did not "steal" the money in the sense of making it their own; second, once she apologized, PAP should have stopped dwelling on it; in fact, Ng Chee Meng might have helped himself greatly if he said to reporters "we should move on; she is young and inexperienced; let's talk about what I will do for Sengkang; I have this that experience ..." By harping on the matter like 2006 James Gomez case and 2012 Yaw Shing Leong case, PAP showed itself to be not learning from experience, and more generally, not knowing its own campaigning shortcomings; it gave the appearance of being too harsh and too keen to extract its pound of flesh, instead of being generous and magnanimous; do remember that a voter would have in the back of his mind "one day if I get into trouble, I hope to be treated leniently".
Gazing into the crystal ball, the 2020 election result is actually even worse than the numbers indicate, for the trends it sets into motion: Raeesah, instead of suffering loss for her inappropriate comments (for which she apologized so this was her own evaluation), actually benefitted by getting elected, in fact she had the effect of dragging the other three team members across the finish line; she is now the golden girl of Workers Party, and certain patterns of behaviour have been validated and so will be followed in the future.
More ominous is this: the western minded liberals have attracted various minority rights advocates, and their coming together will in due course create the major player of singapore opposition politics; for 20 years gay activists have been the strike team of western liberals, identifying their issue as the litmus test of openness, so that the failure to repeal section 377A of criminal code is seen as the most obvious evidence of continuing intolerance. Now there are other issues of minority rights, e.g., not permitting the wearing of hijab for students and uniformed public employees, and Heng Swee Keat's statement that some older voters are not yet ready to accept a non-Chinese prime minster.
You might think that western liberals and ethnic radicals make an odd combination; yet, among the Chinese western liberals it is now political orthodoxy to say singapore chinese have majority privilege, for which they feel suitably guilty; in consequence, they see the need to bend over backwards to redress the social shortcoming
western liberals and minority rights advocates standing together to fight authoritariansm is not just logical, but intoxicatingly liberating, with special appeal to the young, who are much more liable to adopt beliefs without being bothered by their inconsistencies; if you look at Hongkong, you see huge hordes of youths destroying property and acting threateningly, sometimes violently, towards mainlanders, at the same time shouting slogans of democracy, people's rights, openness, freedom, humanity ... It is not hard to envisage the same contradictory thinking catching the young people in Singapore
harmlessly frolicking girls (presumably lesbian) at Pink Dot; you might have seen equally innocent looking ones in Hongkong
now try the picture below: one can turn into the other a lot easier than you think
Even more ominoously, the formation of such a "liberal" coalition with its various elements will draw into play movements to oppose them: I foresee the reactivation of chinese chauvinists, and they are likely to be joined by church people to form the "conservative" faction; so on both sides there will be the same kind of somewhat contradictory yet entirely logical combination, similar to American church people joining Trump despite their distaste. Both sides will have passionate adherents, leaving the PAP rationalist camp holding the fort in between.
It will be a delicate balance, which PAP has not been familiar with, and how well it learns the skills will be the crucial question of the coming decade.