The 36th Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the People's Action Party (PAP) has co-opted four additional members into their ranks.

In a press release on Nov. 19, the chair of the HQ executive committee Chan Chun Sing announced that the CEC had met earlier in the day, and decided to co-opt the following members:

• Edwin Tong, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth and Second Minister for Law.
• Alex Yam, Member of Parliament (MP) for Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC and Mayor of North West District.
• Ng Chee Meng, Secretary-General of the National Trades Union Congress, former MP.
• Victor Lye, PAP candidate for Aljunied GRC in the 2020 general election.

Here's the full list:

Non-MPs in 36th CEC

Ng and Lye did not manage to win seats in Parliament in the recent general election, having contested in Sengkang and Aljunied GRCs respectively.

Both were part of a slate of candidates that lost to candidates from the Workers' Party (WP).

The previous CEC, the 35th, included 18 members. However, all of the members then were also MPs.

The 34th CEC also announced in Jan. 2017 that it co-opted four additional members.

All of its members were MPs too.

Murali Pillai, one of the co-opted members, lost in the 2015 general election but won a seat in Parliament after beating Chee Soon Juan of the Singapore Democratic Party in a 2016 by-election.

Who's out?

There were three newcomers in the 36th CEC as compared to the 35th -- Victor Lye, Edwin Tong and Alex Yam.

They replaced Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen, and MPs Christopher de Souza and Sitoh Yih Pin.

Lawrence Wong was previously co-opted, but managed to be elected to the CEC outright in 2020.

Indranee Rajah did not have to be co-opted in 2018, but was co-opted in 2020.

Office-holders remain unchanged

There were no changes in the list of office-holders.

The positions of Chairman (Gan Kim Yong), Secretary-General (Lee Hsien Loong) and Vice-Chairman (Masagos Zulkifli) remained the same.

The positions of 1st Assistant Secretary-General (Heng Swee Keat) and 2nd Assistant Secretary-General (Chan Chun Sing) also remained the same.

And there was no change to the role of Treasurer (K Shanmugam), Assistant Treasurer (Ong Ye Kung) and the Organising Secretaries (Grace Fu and Desmond Lee).

In addition to the office-holders, there were other appointments made, as follows:

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Top image from Victor Lye and Ng Chee Meng's Facebook pages.