Manifesto - A battle of promises

Disclaimer: This article is based on own research and personal opinions. It does not profess to be an exhaustive analysis of the said topic and the purpose of this article is to present facts/information that readers may find it useful for their own knowledge.

Introduction

Manifesto - a declaration of goals/promises to convey your political agenda to the people in hopes that they will resonate with your party's values and belief system.

At a personal level, a political party's manifesto provides me a general vision of the party's leadership, their prioritised issues for the nation, and what are the long-term plans they envision the nation to have for its people.

Over time, some political parties' manifestos seem to reflect more of their bidding power, i.e. how much of a policy price they are willing to pay for every vote. This gives rise to what some calls it as populism politics while others may call it welfarism. I would term this as a battle of potentially empty promises.

Nevertheless, it is still politicians' job to gain votes and remain in power so it is not entirely their fault for presenting ambitious promises that may fall short in execution. However, should they still be held accountable for blatantly unrealistic policy promises? Yes, at least to me.

A voter's or politician's responsibility to ensure policy promises are realistic?

Since manifestos play a crucial role in electoral competition, is it on the voters to scrutinise all the policy prescriptions or should political parties audit their pledges such that it is responsibly drafted? Who holds the moral obligation to ensure proposed policies are realistically in the best interests of the nation, for both the current and future generation of citizens? Some might say that it is the voter's responsibility to consider what policies would provide for citizens' well-being in the longer term, others may deem it as a party's duty.

A theoretical study reflected the following key characteristics that affect how manifestos are drafted:

1. Ideology - Depending on the party's political bearing (e.g. leftist, conservative), this influences their ways of drafting and legitimising manifestos.
2. Organisation - The organisational size of the party may determine the party's amount of resources and greater complexity in consulting the party members to coordinate the manifesto.
3. Government status - Government parties would have more available resources, thereby allowing them to draft more substantial manifestos. This refers to more policy detail which have a greater impact on post-electoral behaviour.
4. Target electorate - The anticipation of voter interest guides the content of the manifesto, e.g. target electorate for Party A is the first-time voters.

Often, voters express difficulty in manifestos' readability due to a lack of time or experiencing voter's fatigue from reading a plethora of manifestos. Similarly, political parties would prefer to magnify manifestos as a campaign material because every form of rallying matters.

Perhaps we can take a glimpse of published manifestos before having a take on whether should there be greater accountability on parties' promises to the people.

Case study 1 - Singapore Democratic Party's (SDP) manifesto in 2019

Divided into 10 categorised policies, SDP's manifesto included policies relating to education, cost of living, the Malay community, etc. Drawing attention to their policy on "Population" which SDP pushed for the reform of Singapore's immigration policy, a discussion of local vs foreign workers that is frequently debated in parliament.

This particular policy triggered the emotional aspect of voters (at least from the way I read it). The manifesto spoke about how the increase in foreign workers would affect Singaporeans' liveability on the island as overcrowding of foreign talent creates rising cost of living, over-extended public transport system, reduced quality of life for Singaporeans. SDP proposed the TalentTrack Scheme to address these challenges.

The scheme is a simple yet rigorous merit-based system to screen foreigners seeking employment in Singapore. Factors such as age, number of dependents, qualifications, work experience and skill set will be used to assess potential foreign workers.?

First impression: Seems like a scheme targeted to reduce foreign workers' employability so that companies will hire more from the local pool. In the manifesto, it mentioned that foreigners who are already working in Singapore can continue until the expiry of their work visas. Thereafter, they will be required to apply to TalentTrack scheme (page 25) and approval will be based on the said factors.

Personal thoughts: While there is good intention to ensure Singaporeans' employability in the competitive world we live in today, is constructing tougher barriers for foreigners' entry the effective solution to unemployment? Or a cynical thought would be that is this a political tool to criticise the current government's policy. The proposed scheme was also described broadly - a lack of details, for example the age range, are qualifications based on what the prestige level of the school or the relevance of the course, what would the merit-based point system comprise.

Perhaps another proposed policy seems to be more of an empty promise, that is the return of CPF savings in full. SDP put forward the "opt-in" clause (page 26) where the retainment of retirees' CPF funds are on a voluntary basis. While CPF has always been a controversial topic, this proposed policy seems thoughtless. In cases where a retiree chooses full withdrawal and he/she is not financially sensible, who would bear the burden of caring for the retiree who has spent all his/her retirement fund? The choice for full withdrawal also puts elderly at greater risk to scam, did SDP consider for any possible mitigating measures to prevent such scams?

What are your thoughts?

Case study 2 - Pakatan Harapan's (PH) "10 promises in 100 days" manifesto in 2018

In 2018, PH promised a wide range of policy goals to be achieved in 100 days. One of the 10 promises was to increase the financial allocation for the Ministry of Health from 2 per cent of GDP to 4 per cent of GDP (page 31). PH's argument was that the lack of adequate funding had led to insufficient access to health services. Unfortunately, this policy promise was broken as there were financial constraints according to the Health Minister in 2018.

The government eventually conceded that they would not be able to realise all the 10 promises in 100 days as pledged in their manifesto. Pushing of political blame occurred as the PH government stressed that it was due to the previous government's corruption that it was not possible to fulfil their promises to the people.

Could these have been mitigated if political parties had been more realistic in their promises?

Case study 3 - The Green Party's manifesto in 2019 promised to deliver a Universal Basic Income (UBI)

During the 2019 United Kingdom general election, the Green Party advocated for UBI, a weekly payment for everyone. Pensioners will have a decent income and the rate will be adjusted to tackle inflation over the years (page 53).

To finance for UBI and other welfare policies, the Green Party suggested for the expenditure to be covered by tax changes, savings revenue (such as revenue from creation of new jobs) and public borrowing.

Immediate thoughts: The Green Party's policies that require huge financing seem to have huge confidence that there will be sufficient inflows to fund for these policy expenditures. I guess at least in their Appendix, the Green Party stated their own calculations of how much additional revenue would be made through various income sources such as scraping of the government's road building programme, increasing corporation tax, etc. However, would these ambitious revenues be able to materialise if the Green Party does make it to govern the nation?

Are manifestos still important for voters in the end?

Despite manifestos having the tendency to consist of unrealistic or vague policies, I am still of the opinion that it is essential for voters to be informed of political parties' plans for the nation. Also, manifestos allow voters to have a glimpse of the kind of leaders they are casting their ballots for.

It is not easy for every voter to spend hours, days or even weeks reading and analysing every manifesto especially in states where there may be large number of political parties competing. However, voters need to recognise that this is not an excuse to be uninformed of political parties' governing plans and solely vote on their liking for the party or political individual, e.g. personality politics.

As such, there is great cruciality in how informed a voter is in parties' proposed policies and it matters when their understanding is used to hold political parties accountable for their promises. Do you agree?