Author: Thum Ping Tjin

Nearly a year ago, we embarked on the Citizens’ Agenda: our quest to find out what our Singaporean community thinks are the most important issues facing Singapore, and then to write and commission journalism features, research, comics, podcasts, and videos on those subjects.

We summarised the answers from Stage 1 into 28 issues. In Stage 2, we asked our community to vote on the top 5 issues. In the months since, we’ve commissioned and released those articles, discussed them in democracy classrooms, and published them all in a book (The Singapore Citizens’ Agenda, available for sale now!).

Now, with Singapore’s General Election looming, we complete this iteration of the Citizens’ Agenda by telling you how the political parties responded to the issues. We reproduce our email to the parties below, and produce all their answers verbatim.

Our thanks to the parties who responded, and to everyone who took part in the Citizens’ Agenda. This has been a tremendous experience for us, and we hope it has been educational for everyone, Singaporean or otherwise. We plan to run an improved version of The Citizens’ Agenda in Malaysia next, and then to run it again in Singapore next year.

Summary Results

Thum Ping Tjin (“PJ”) is Founder and Managing Director of New Naratif. A Rhodes Scholar, Commonwealth Scholar, Olympic athlete, and the only Singaporean to swim the English Channel, his work centres on Southeast Asian governance and politics. His most recent work is "Nationalism and Decolonisation in Singapore: The Malayan Generation, 1953-63" (Routledge, 2024).