Candidates must submit their nominations on June 30, the first day of official campaigning.

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Singapore to hold general elections on July 10, says PM after Covid-19 lockdown lifts

Singapore to hold general elections on July 10, says PM after Covid-19 lockdown lifts

While Lee has until April next year to call the election, he said he decided to go ahead now as there was no certainty the pandemic would be over by then. He cited the examples of South Korea, Taiwan and several European countries that had gone ahead with planned elections despite the current global public health crisis.

The announcement comes four days after Lee’s administration further eased partial lockdown measures first imposed on April 7, with citizens now allowed to gather in public in groups of five or fewer.

The Elections Department last week said candidates will be given unprecedented access to the broadcast media to ensure they are able to connect with voters despite the restrictions on physical political meetings, and has urged parties to use digital platforms for campaigning.

Lee’s PAP, in power since 1959 and co-founded by the late Lee Kuan Yew, the prime minister’s father and the country’s revered independence leader, is expected to comfortably retain its parliamentary supermajority.

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But all eyes will be on whether the party can repeat or surpass its 2015 showing of 69.9 per cent – as voters backed the PAP in larger-than-usual numbers in an election held six months after Lee Kuan Yew’s death – or if its vote share will be at the lower end of the 60 per cent range of previous polls.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said in a note that it expected the “PAP’s vote share to fall from the 2015 election [but] risk aversion among the populace and a weak opposition mean that it will retain a comfortable grip on power.”

The Workers’ Party, which has six MPs in parliament, will be seeking to defend these seats after a tumultuous electoral term. Its key leaders were found liable for millions of dollars in damages in a civil lawsuit last October over the mismanagement of municipal funds.

No other opposition party has elected MPs, and the Workers’ Party’s chief Pritam Singh last year warned of the possibility of a “wipe out” of its MPs in the coming polls. The Straits Times on Tuesday reported that the party is planning to field a slate of 20 candidates in the polls, down from 28 in the 2015 elections.

The party will contest in a total of five precincts, including the five-seat group Aljunied group representation constituency (GRC) and the single-seat ward of Hougang it currently holds, the newspaper said.

GRCs are constituencies with four or five MPs, of which at least one must be non-Chinese to ensure a multiracial mix in parliament.

The ongoing recession and the PAP government’s plan to arrest job losses and restructure the economy for the post-pandemic era are likely to be the dominating topics during campaigning.

Some opposition parties have hinted that they may focus their energy during campaign events on a perennial hot topic – the country’s heavy reliance and treatment of foreign workers.

The mass coronavirus infections among these workers, most of whom live in crowded dormitories, is also likely to be hotly debated. A bulk of the over 42,000 coronavirus cases in the country involve the residents of these dorms.

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The EIU said “while the government's initial response to the coronavirus pandemic was viewed as successful, its reputation has been damaged by a large-scale outbreak within foreign-worker dormitories, which has prompted economically damaging lockdown measures.”

It said while the recent stabilisation of the situation may have given the administration confidence to go ahead with the election, “any surge in community cases from today to the polling day might lead to criticism on the government's decision, and will, therefore, backfire its approval rating”.

After an initial stuttered response to the mass infections, Lee’s administration moved rapidly to stabilise the situation with the help of the military and civil society groups. The government in early June announced an ambitious plan to build dormitories for 100,000 workers in order to decrease the living density in the current accommodation.

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Local political observers have also been keenly awaiting the vote as it is seen as a referendum on the so-called fourth generation or “4G” PAP leaders groomed during the last decade to take over the party leadership.

Lee, 68, has said he would hand over power to a successor some time after the upcoming election. Lee is Singapore’s third prime minister. He succeeded Goh Chok Tong – his father’s successor – in 2004, after a 14-year stint as deputy prime minister.

Political analysts do not expect curveballs in the coming elections.

There are no public approval ratings in the city state, but a weekly approval rating of the country’s general direction – conducted by local pollster Blackbox Research – has been holding steady at around 80 per cent for weeks. The figure had dipped slightly in April, when the government imposed the partial lockdown, or “circuit breaker”, as coronavirus infections began to surge among the migrant workers.

A total of 93 seats will be contested in the election, of which 14 are single-seat wards while 17 are GRCs.

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Alongside the Workers’ Party, 11 other opposition parties are expected to field candidates.

Among these groups is the Progress Singapore Party, founded last year by Tan Cheng Bock, a vocal former PAP backbench MP. The party’s formation created a buzz in political circles as it marked the first splintering of the PAP in decades.

The PSP has also gained the approval of Prime Minister Lee’s brother Lee Hsien Yang – who along with his sister Lee Wei Ling is publicly at odds with their politician brother in a dispute over their father’s estate.