GE2020: Fair or Foul?

Singapore’s 2020 general election saw its fair share of drama and comedy, and the results were not unexpected. But beyond the polls, the hard truth is impossible to avoid—the electoral system is in dire need of an overhaul.
Former journalist and university lecturer Bertha Henson takes you through the days leading up to 10 July 2020 and peels back the veneer of Singapore politics. Aided by a team of NUS undergraduates, she draws on her past experience covering Singapore’s polls to give you a blow-by-blow account of the campaign, and some cold truths about the political playing field.


Bertha Henson worked in the Singapore Press Holdings stable of newspapers for 26 years, her last designation being Associate Editor of The Straits Times, Singapore's national broadsheet. In 2012, she left the organisation to start her own media consultancy, Newsmakers, and to teach at the National University of Singapore. She is currently an Associate Professor of Practice at the Communications and New Media Department in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in NUS. She started blogging at Bertha Harian the day after she left SPH employment and launched Breakfast Network, a semi-professional news website with friends and undergraduates in early 2013. The website closed its operations at the end of the year because she and fellow editors declined to meet registration requirements imposed by the Media Development Authority. She later set up The Middle Ground, which ran from 2015 to 2017. Her first book, Troublemaker, is a collection of her columns published in 2014. She still blogs at Bertha Harian.