The rumours – which have gone without flat-out refutations from the government – have been partly fuelled by increasingly frequent reports in the PAP-friendly local media about prospective fresh faces in the party. Such publicity is usually accorded in the lead-up to a general election.

Such talk has also triggered criticism that the party is putting political expediency ahead of dealing with the health crisis, but insiders stress that the whole point of early elections is to secure a fresh mandate for a new government to decisively deal with the pandemic and keep the virus-stricken economy from being further ravaged.

Parliament is due to sit on April 6, about the same time an ongoing process for the voter roll – currently open for public inspection – is expected to be certified and republished.

After that, Lee has full powers to dissolve parliament to trigger elections. One scenario painted by some observers is a dissolution of parliament in mid-April, paving the way for an election in early May. Lee in the interview said once the voter roll was republished “all possibilities are there”.

If called, door-to-door campaigning – a mainstay of hustings on the compact island – will likely not feature in the election. The PAP and the country’s main opposition parties said they had made changes to their outreach activities after the country’s Covid-19 task force earlier this week indefinitely banned social gatherings of more than 10 people as part of stepped-up measures to deal with the outbreak.

In a drastic bid to contain the spread of the virus, bars, cinemas and other entertainment establishments have been ordered to close until April 30, while schools are trialling a system of once-a-week teleschooling to prepare for the possibility of a shutdown.

In a statement to the South China Morning Post, a PAP spokeswoman said the party “will abide by the guidelines that the task force has imposed and make adjustments to its usual outreach activities”.

In doing so, the party will “explore different formats for our upcoming activities when necessary,” she said.

The Workers’ Party – the biggest of the republic’s smattering of opposition parties and the only one with seats in parliament – on Thursday said it would temporarily suspend all house visits. Such visits are a key platform of an outreach strategy that the party’s leaders said had helped them in 2011, when they scored for the first time the previously elusive prize of a group representation constituency of five seats.

The Singapore Democratic Party and the newly formed Progress Singapore Party also made similar pledges.

Jose Raymond, chairman of the Singapore People’s Party, said he had stopped “knocking on doors” in the Potong Pasir ward where he is planning to contest. Community-based events across the Bishan-Toa Payoh, Marymount and Mountbatten precincts where the party will field candidates have also been suspended.

Long-time Singapore politics observer Mustafa Izzuddin said given the circumstances, a pandemic-time election was a “political gamble” by the PAP. “But [it is a gamble] which they believe is worth taking as it will pay off in the end as leadership in times of crises generally tends to favour the incumbent,” said the research fellow at the republic’s Institute of South Asian Studies.

“The PAP government finds itself in a political dilemma and so will likely choose the least worst option by holding the election during the pandemic but in a controlled environment.”

Lee’s latest comments are unlikely to slow the trickle of criticism coming his way over the election plan. The dissenters acknowledge the government’s stellar handling of the crisis so far – with its playbook now seen as instructive for the rest of the world – but the poll plan is seen as antithetical to these efforts.

One such condemnation came on Friday from Dr Kanwaljit Soin, one of the country’s best-known civil society figures and a leading orthopaedic surgeon. In a hard-hitting letter published in The Straits Times, Dr Soin urged “medical specialists within the ruling party” to “become the voices of experience and conscience to counter the voices of expediency”.

“There is an incongruity between the existing pandemic, which has been likened to a war situation, and our government leaders discussing the possibility of holding a general election soon, which entails the introduction of new candidates and doing house visits, albeit in smaller numbers,” Dr Soin wrote. “Surely, the incumbent government feels secure enough to carry on without seeking a new mandate at this precarious juncture of our nation's existence.”