SINGAPORE has announced it will segregate political parties on future general election nights and tighten result announcements in an attempt to stifle any possibility of trouble.

But the new measures, released in parliament by Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng, were not universally popular with MPs, with complaints Mar 13 that some of the flavour of elections would be lost.

In the tightly controlled city-state, where a fight involving just five people is defined as a riot, Wong admitted there was no recent history of election violence but the potential was there.

"Some trouble-makers have jeered and taunted the candidates and their supporters from the opposite camp. Such behaviour can spark off major law-and-order problems," the Straits Times on Mar 13 quoted Wong as saying.

"Although there were no arrests at announcement centres in recent elections, the potential for the situation at such gatherings to escalate and turn ugly is very real."

At the next general election, to be held by August 2002 but widely speculated to be in the offing for this year, election results will be announced at one central point which will be off-limits to candidates and the public.

Political parties will be "physically segregated" at separate assembly centres where candidates can be with their supporters, Wong told parliament.

Singapore politics are dominated by the People's Action Party (PAP) with the opposition occupying just three of the 92 seats in parliament.

At the last election in January 1997, the PAP was declared the winner without a vote being cast as the opposition failed to field candidates in more than half the seats.

Wong, explaining the need to tone down election traditions, said crowds from rival parties packing result centres could make the atmosphere very tense.

But MP Zulkifli Bharudin said that was part of an election.

"It's all about atmosphere of election. A lot of people are really looking forward to that. They want to go down to the sites. They want to see," he told Channel News Asia.

"The atmosphere is going to be tuned down a bit but it's going to be good for security."

Opposition MP Chiam See Tong said the new system would be more civilised.

"Those who already attended the old style of receipt of election results would have experienced something which the present generation will not have. Election time as you know is a hot time. People get very excited and full of cheers and excitement."

The PAP has had a stranglehold on power in Singapore since the republic was founded in 1965. Late last year a confident Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong described the opposition parties as posing "little threat."