GE2025 expenses: PAP team spent about S$388,756 on uncontested Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC

The first tranche of candidates' election expenses in the 2025 general elections is published on the Elections Department (ELD) website, with the expenses of 35 candidates open for public inspection.

Candidates have 31 days from the day the election results are published in the ELD'S Gazette to submit a return on election expenses, as well as declarations by both the election agent and candidate, to the returning officer (RO).

This is to "ensure accountability and transparency of each candidate's election finances", ELD said.

As GE2025's results were published in the gazette on May 16 this year, candidates must declare their expenses by Jun. 16, 2025.

35 candidates made declarations so far

As of May 29, 35 of the 211 candidates who ran for GE2025 have declared their expenses.

Some of the categories included in the expenses are online and non-online election advertising, election meeting expenses and allowances for election agent, polling agents and counting agents.

As of now, the highest expenditure of S$104,085 was by People's Action Party's (PAP) Goh Pei Ming from the Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC, whose party won after a walkover was declared.

The former brigadier-general and chief of staff of Singapore Armed Forces spent the most on non-online election advertising, at S$52,650.

Goh's teammate Tin Pei Ling also chalked up an amount of S$84,128, making her expenditure the second highest so far.

The bulk of Tin's spending also went to non-online election advertising, at S$56,079.

Together with the other members of the team, the five of them spent a total of S$388,756: Speaker of Parliament Seah Kian Peng spent S$74,693, new MP Diana Pang spent S$74,437, and former Nee Soon MP Faishal Ibrahim spent S$51,413.

Independent candidate Darryl Lo declared an expenditure of S$12,213.

S$10,201 of this came from non-online election advertising.

Jeremy Tan, the only other independent candidate, declared S$16,075.

His largest spending came from expenses for his only rally at the Home of Athletics on May 1, at S$8,804.

Seven candidates declared that no expenses were spent, namely Red Dot United's (RDU) Sharad Kumar, David Foo and Pang Heng Chuan, Singapore Democratic Party's (SDP) Alec Tok, Singapore Democratic Alliance's (SDA) Harminder Pal Singh, and Singapore People's Party's (SPP) Lim Rui Xian and Muhammad Norhakim.

People's Power Party's (PPP) Samuel Lee, who recently announced his resignation from the party via TikTok, declared a total expense of S$100, making it among the lowest expenditures declared thus far.

All S$100 were declared on the category "other expenses".

Candidates also have to declare donations received.

RDU's Ben Puah, who spent S$109 this election, was the only candidate of the 35 who declared donations, as he received S$280 from anonymous donors via six separate PayNow transactions.

At present, no full party has submitted its expenses declarations, or have the declarations reflected on the ELD site.

No Workers' Party candidate has so far declared their expenditures yet.

Members of the public can access the elections expenses declarations via SingPass on ELD's website.

The returns and declarations will be available for inspection for a period of six months.

Top image via ELD