The PAP won 82 of the 84 seats and secured 75 percent of the vote, its strongest showing since 1980.

In nine elections since independence in 1965, the PAP's worst performance was to concede four seats in 1991 with 61 percent of the vote.

The party was born in 1954, the brainchild of Lee Kuan Yew and other Singaporeans who had studied in Britain and returned home determined to end British colonialism.

Lee, modern Singapore's founding father, was first elected to the Singapore legislature in 1955, and in 1959 when Britain approved self-rule he led the PAP to its inaugural election victory.

It has not been seriously challenged since.

In 1963 the PAP took on the communists at the hustings and won 37 of the 56 seats, and in the next four elections, the first after independence, the party took every electorate as the parliament swelled to 75 seats.

It was not until 1981 that the one-party government was broken when former Workers Party chief J.B. Jeyaretnam won a by-election to become the first opposition MP in independent Singapore. No by-elections have been approved since.

In the 1984 general election, Jeyaretnam was re-elected and joined by Singapore Democratic Party leader Chiam See Tong, now leader of the Singapore Democratic Alliance, to give the opposition two seats in the 79 seat parliament.

A new chapter opened in Singapore's modern history in November 1990, when Lee stepped aside for Goh Chok Tong to become the city-state's second prime minister.

Nine months later, the opposition enjoyed its best electoral succcess taking four of the 81 seats in the 1991 general election.

But it was not the start of a growing opposition force. When Goh went to the public again in 1997 the PAP regained two seats.

Such has been the PAP stranglehold on Singapore politics, it has won four of the nine elections since independence on nomination day when the opposition failed to cover 50 percent of the seats.

In terms of votes, the PAP's strongest showing was under Lee in 1968 when the party took 86.72 percent.

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