WP's Yee Jenn Jong: Covid-19 should not stop Elections Dept from issuing boundaries report when ready

The Electoral Boundaries Review Committee and Singapore's Elections Department should not stall the release of its report on recommendations for voting boundary revisions in Singapore.

This was put forward by former Non-constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) and Worker's Party member Yee Jenn Jong, who spoke out on the issue in a Facebook post on Wednesday (March 11) night.

While Yee agrees that the general election should not be held in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak, which does appear to be escalating with recent new clusters and a spike in new imported cases from around the region, he said the EBRC report should be released if it's ready and it should not be delayed by the outbreak.

The amount of time spent on EBRC report has been nearly four times longer than the time they took in 2015, Yee pointed out. He wrote:

"The Elections Department and the EBRC have the perfect chance to show that they are independent. Let that be demonstrated."

You can see his Facebook post here:That being said, the range of changes likely to be enacted in this latest round of electoral boundary revisions is projected to be significantly larger than in previous elections, upon directives issued by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The EBRC comprises of five civil servants was formed last August and was announced a month later in September 2019:

They are:

1. Secretary to Prime Minister Tan Kee Yong (Chairman)
2. CEO of the Housing & Development Board Dr Cheong Koon Hean
3. CE of Singapore Land Authority Tan Boon Khai
4. Chief Statistician at the Department of Statistics Wong Wee Kim
5. Head of Elections Department Koh Siong Ling (Secretary)

All the members, save for the secretary, were in the 2011 and 2015 EBRC.

In a statement, the ELD said that the committee was tasked with recommending the number of electoral divisions based on changes in the number of electors.

They were also directed to reduce the average size of the Group Representation Constituencies (GRC) and have more than the current 13 Single Member Constituencies (SMC).

The EBRC report generally takes about two to seven months to be deliberated and reviewed before its release.

Earlier in January, Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing said that the report is still not ready yet in response to Workers’ Party chief Pritam Singh's question on when the report will be released to the public.

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Top photo via Yee Jenn Jong's Facebook and by Bob Liu via Google Maps.