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THE committee that reviews Singapore’s electoral boundaries and divisions has been formed, said the Elections Department (ELD) on Wednesday (Jan 22).

With the formation of the committee, the next General Election (GE) – due by November 2025 – could be just a few months away.

Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has also directed ELD’s registration officer to revise the Registers of Electors to bring them up to date, and complete this revision before Apr 1, 2025.

The revised Registers of Electors will be open for public inspection in February, ELD said.

The Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) has received certain terms of reference for its review.

In recommending the number and boundaries of group representation constituencies (GRCs) and single member constituencies (SMCs), it should account for significant changes in the number of electors in the current electoral divisions, due to population shifts and housing developments.

Furthermore, in determining the number and size of GRCs and SMCs, the committee should seek to keep certain parameters “at about the same as that in the last general election”.

These parameters are the average size of GRCs, the proportion of Members of Parliament (MPs) elected from SMCs, and the average ratio of electors to elected MPs.

In a Facebook post announcing the EBRC’s formation, PM Wong confirmed that it was convened on Wednesday.

The committee is in the midst of deliberations and will make its recommendations to him when it has completed its review.

The EBRC is chaired by Tan Kee Yong, secretary to the prime minister.

The other members are Tan Meng Dui, chief executive officer of the Housing and Development Board; Colin Low, chief executive of the Singapore Land Authority; and Koh Eng Chuan, chief statistician at the Department of Statistics. Lim Zhi Yang, the head of ELD, will serve as the committee’s secretary.

Responding to the announcement, a Workers’ Party (WP) spokesperson said that the party “welcomes the decision by the ELD to announce the formation of the EBRC, on the date that it is convened”.

The government is not required to announce when the EBRC is formed, and has on past occasions announced its formation months afterward.

The WP looks forward to the committee’s reasoning and justification for adjustments made to existing constituencies in the White Paper on the report, the spokesperson added.

Road to GE

The EBRC is appointed by the prime minister. Its role is to review and redraw electoral boundaries, as well as to recommend the number of Members of Parliament, single seats and Group Representation Constituencies there should be.

In the past five GEs, the EBRC has taken two to seven months to release its report, with Polling Day happening half a month to four months afterwards.

After the committee’s report is published, the next step towards a GE is for Parliament to be dissolved and the Writ of Election issued. This typically happens within days of the release of the report.

The writ specifies the date of Nomination Day, which must be no earlier than five days and no later than a month after the writ is issued.

Campaigning begins on Nomination Day after the notice of contested election is issued, with the law requiring at least 10 days between then and Polling Day. The day immediately before Polling Day is Cooling-off Day, when campaigning is not allowed.

Of the 13 GEs since Singapore’s independence in 1965, three landed in September and another three in December; two took place in May; and one each in January, April, July, August and November.

This year’s GE will be PM Wong’s first as prime minister, and thus the first in nearly 20 years without former prime minister Lee Hsien Loong at the helm.

In Singapore’s last GE in 2020, the ruling People’s Action Party maintained its parliamentary majority with 83 out of 93 seats, but its vote share declined to 61.2 per cent from 69.9 per cent in 2015.

PM Wong said last November that he had not decided when to hold the elections.