The 1959 Legislative Assembly Election was a watershed political event as it marked the first time that all 51 seats in the legislative body were to be fully elected. The election saw a fierce contest between the Singapore People’s Alliance (SPA), headed by then Chief Minister Lim Yew Hock, and the People’s Action’s Party (PAP) led by Lee Kuan Yew. The SPA lost at the polls, securing only 4 seats against the 43 won by the PAP. The view then was that Lim’s tough clampdown on the student and leftist activism movements in 1956 and 1957 had contributed to his electoral defeat by alienating him from the Chinese-speaking masses.
