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Abstract Populism has risen to become a contemporary political phenomenon at both the global, national and local levels. Electoral contestations, including the election of district heads or "Pilkada", were infiltrated by populist political practices. In this paper, I mostly use the perspective of political philosophy on populism. The main thesis of this paper is that populism threatens the existence of democracy when populist actors and politicians exploit the ethnic and religious sentiments of the voters, or exploit the people's vulnerabilities as mere populist narratives and rhetoric to win the electoral support. On the other hand, the discourse on antagonism in left populism is able to make a positive contribution to democracy as long as it is always placed within the framework of an antagonistic democratic discourse. Within the framework of antagonistic democracy, left populism consistently exposes the depravity of power, constructs the "people" as a group that opposes the oligarchic and neoliberal elites, and struggles for the right to social justice of the oppressed. This politico-philosophical analysis of populism is relevant in reflecting on the moments of electoral contestations such as the election of district heads (Pilkada) and on the fight for a better future of democracy.

There has been much discussion about the ideological or political underpinnings of toponyms, e.g., Faraco and Murphy (1997) on Spain, Cohen and Kliot (1992) on the Israeli administered territories, Nash (1999) on the Irish Republic or Yeo (1992, 1996) on Singapore. The Israeli, Irish and Singaporean examples are different from the Spanish one in that the struggle is also expressed linguistically through the form of the names chosen. Yeo (1996) notes the preference for street names based on the Malay language in the 1960s as an expression of Singaporean political independence. In this paper, I examine the names given to residential buildings (condominiums) in Singapore: what kinds of names are used and the reasons for any patterns discerned. While street names are usually tightly controlled by municipal boards, building names are usually given freer rein, although they would still need governmental approval. Building names would therefore reflect the attitudes of the commercially powerful rather than those of the politically powerful. In the context of the Singaporean state ideology of multilingualism (Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin Chinese and Tamil) and multiracialism (and therefore multiculturalism), it might therefore be expected that the multilingual nature of the community might also be expressed in the building names accorded. The official languages are clearly not equal based on their degree of representation. Also of note is the presence of languages such as French and Spanish which do not form a part of the normal linguistic repertoire of a Singaporean.