About 80% of residents visited at Serangoon Central mentioned that they want to know when the next General Elections will be held, said former Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) Yee Jenn Jong in a Facebook post.
As a reply, Mr Yee said that he wish he knew when the elections will happen, but the ruling party is the one with the “sole rights to decide as the elections department reports to the Prime Minister”.
In fact, he expressed that none of citizens will know if the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) has been formed unless we keep raising this question in the Parliament monthly, which according to Mr Yee is “a rather ridiculous situation for a democracy”.
Just in the beginning of the month, Minister of Trade and Industry, Chan Chun Sing revealed that the EBRC has not been formed yet, indicating that the upcoming general election might not happen in September as speculated.
Mr Chan was responding to a question raised by Workers’ Party’s Pritam Singh in Monday’s (8 July) Parliament sitting to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who wanted to know if PM Lee has established the committee, and if not, when he intends to do so.
This is the second time Mr Pritam Singh had raised the question to PM Lee asking when the committee will be formed.
He had earlier posed the question back in February 28, and said: “It would be a waste of Parliament’s time, and bordering on an abuse of process, if an MP had to file the same parliamentary question to the Prime Minister when rumours of an imminent election are in the air.”
The formation of the committee is generally taken as a strong indication that a general election is round the corner.
Although Mr Chan said that the EBRC has not been formed yet, but there have been prominent signs indicating that elections are just around the corner.
On 10 July (Wednesday), the Elections Department (ELD) under the Prime Minister’s Office had called a three-year tender to provide documents-related services, including printing, packing and delivery.
The tender is the second tender called by the ELD in the span of two months after it opened a tender for the provision of bus transportation services to support election operations.
The contractor who will be awarded the tender will be bound by a contract starting 28 Aug this year to 27 Aug 2022, which stipulates that in addition to:
- printing and packing items such as printed cards, forms, posters, signs, ballot box funnels and plastic folders, and
- delivering documents to poll stations, counting centres and the ELD training centre,
The contractor to whom the tender is awarded will also be responsible for providing a secured storage facility for election materials with closed-circuit surveillance cameras (CCTV) and physical access controls.
Despite having prominent signs which indicates that elections are imminent, but there’s no confirmation of it as of now since the EBRC has not been formed yet.
Highlighting how secretive the government is with the elections dates, Mr Yee said that “the more insecure the ruling party is, the shorter the notice period”.
As an example, he stated that “elections have been called just a couple of days after boundaries were changed” and the “boundaries can be changed at will and informed just weeks before elections are called”.
