PAP meaning in Governmental ?

The People's Action Party (abbreviation: PAP) is a major conservative centre-right political party in Singapore and is one of the three contemporary political parties represented in parliament, alongside the Workers' Party (WP) and the Progress Singapore Party (PSP).

Initially founded as a traditional centre-left party in 1954, the leftist faction was soon expelled from the party in 1961 by Lee Kuan Yew amid Singapore's merger with Malaysia, in his bid to move the party's ideology towards the centre after its first electoral victory in 1959. Beginning in the 1960s, the party henceforth began to move towards the right. Following the 1965 agreement which led to Singapore's exit from Malaysia, almost the entire opposition except for the WP boycotted the following elections in 1968 in response to their incredulity towards independence, thereafter allowing the PAP the opportunity to exercise a monopoly over its governance of national institutions.

Between 1965 and 1981, the PAP was the only political force represented in parliament, until its first electoral defeat at a by-election in Anson, which saw the WP winning a seat. However, the PAP has not seen its hegemony effectively threatened and has always exceeded 60% of the votes and 80% of the seats in all subsequent elections to date. The PAP is currently the longest, uninterrupted ruling party among multiparty parliamentary democracies in the world at 62 years and running as of 2021, as well as the second in history after Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party which led for 71 years.

Positioned on the centre-right of Singaporean politics, the People Action Party is largely ideologically conservative. The party has generally adopted liberal economic policies—favouring free market economics but has at times engaged in state interventionism such as land reform, recollecting some of its history as a former leftist party. On social policy, it supports civic nationalism and communitarianism with a socially conservative approach. On foreign policy, it favours a strong military capability, serving as the guarantor of the country's continued independence due to its strategic position as a city-state.