Basket.

And so the nation goes to the polls tommorrow, after what has been an unusually interesting campaign period. Despite all the usual talk of a Singapore election, there is a slight feeling of a real contest in the air this time - aided by the fact that, for the first time in eighteen years, the PAP was not returned to power before Polling Day proper.

But there are other signs. The PAP's incessant harping on a simple case of absent-mindedness - is that desperation I sense? - the comparatively furious public debate this time around, the boldness of the opposition candidates (at a rally I attended yesterday, one of Ang Mo Kio's WP candidates called upon the people to 'pick a Prime Minister!' in raucuous Hokkien). Much of the ruling party's support has always come from amongst the older generation, 40 years and up, they who witnessed the strikes of the 1950s, Separation, the race riots of the 1960s and the economic difficulties that marked a new nation during the 1970s and 1980s. To them, the PAP is a symbol of order and good governance, and it is not hard to see why; neither David Marshall nor Lim Yew Hock seemed capable of preventing Chinese High school students from locking themselves up in class and avoid the resultant poor publicity of riot police having to force them out, and the Barisan blew their big chance when Merger collapsed into acrimonious Separation.

And it is precisely this group that shrinks by year, that gets smaller and smaller as each election passes. Instead, the group that is rather more circumspect, cynical and critical expands - the young and politically aware in their 20s, raised in a Singapore where labour unrest is unheard of, race riots a distant memory and sonorous proclamations on democracy and the rights of men heard on the radio and read in the newspapers daily. For them, the PAP is viewed as an entirely different creature - at best, the monolithic ruling behemoth that cynically exercises all the advantages of a long-incumbent government to ruthlessly crush an opposition that is already so weak.

The truth, as always, is somewhere in between. But the truth is also that the PAP will find elections progressively more difficult to fight. Already this one is proving more difficult than the previous. The opposition is not the poorly-funded and organised collection of independents of elections-past; there is a relatively strong collection of parties this time around with their own well-oiled party machinery and educated, eloquent young candidates. This coming election, even if it still proves to be a resounding PAP victory, may yet be a dress rehearsal for the future - a future where there will be a decent opposition presence and some genuine debate in Parliament.

However, ominously, this election does not look to be shaping up like the thumping victory the PAP received in 1997 and 2001. It might resemble more the 1991 election, where four seats fell to the opposition and the SDP emerged as a force to be reckoned with (it has since fallen on hard times, unfortunately). There is even some resemblance in the conditions in that Mr Goh Chok Tong was then contesting his first election as Prime Minister - a position in which Mr Lee Hsien Loong currently finds himself.

I could, of course, be completely erroneous in my predictions. But this Polling Day, the results will be worth the watching.