the party’s reputation has been damaged by a string of rare political scandals <\/a>including a senior minister’s arrest in a corruption probe, as well as two lawmakers’ resignations over an extramarital affair.<\/p>\n\n\n\nVoters at polling stations told the BBC on Friday this could influence their vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I think at this election some voters are expressing how they feel about the PAP and some are voting for who they want. It’s 50-50 i would say,” businesswoman Ms Tong told the BBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“But at least this time round people are more aware now of what the president can or cannot do.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The president acts as the custodian of the city’s substantial financial reserves so Singapore requires its candidates to have either civil service or corporate experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Shanmugaratnam is the frontrunner in the vote, the first to be contested in more than a decade – after outgoing President Halimah Yacob declined to contest a second six-year term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other candidates include Tan Kin Lian, a 75-year-old former insurance executive who has been criticised for social media posts he made in the past about women and Indians, and Ng Kok Song, a former wealth fund investment officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The candidates’ ethnicities in the multicultural but majority-Chinese city-state has been one of the issues too – with some highlighting Mr Shanmugaratnam may become the first non-Chinese president to be elected by voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However a voter told the BBC on Friday race was not a factor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I always saw it about being the best candidate and not about race,” said digital consultant Mr Anthony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I think we are far better off than other country when it comes to race. I won’t say we are past race entirely, but we have what it takes to move past it in time.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There has also been consternation among voters about the stringent restrictions on who can run for president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They must have either served as a senior civil servant or the chief executive of a public company worth at least $500m Singaporean dollars (\u00a3292m; $370m).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Voting is compulsory for Singapore’s 2.7 million eligible citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BBC News: Singaporeans have headed to the polls to vote in their first contested presidential election in over a decade. The president has a mainly ceremonial role in the city-state with few powers and little say in public affairs. However, the result on Friday could be a marker of public sentiment on the long-term ruling party following a string of MP scandals. Leading candidate Tharman Shanmugaratnam was a veteran minister of Singapore’s ruling PAP party. A former deputy prime minister and finance minister, the 66-year-old economist resigned from the People’s Action Party in June to contest the presidential election. Prime… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34499,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34497\/revisions\/34499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}