Workers’ Party (WP) secretary-general Pritam Singh has said that it is the love of his family that keeps him going, no matter the uncertainty over whether the next General Election will be called later this year or next year.
On 4 Sept, the Elections Department (ELD) announced that the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) was convened last month, marking the first firm step towards the next General Election (GE).
The formation of the EBRC – which reviews the boundaries of the electoral map – precedes the calling of the next GE. In the past three GEs, the EBRC has taken between 2-4 months to complete the review. The time between the release of the EBRC’s report and polling day has ranged from as little as 17 days to as long as six months, in Singapore history.
Since the ELD announced the EBRC’s formation, speculation over when the next GE will be called has been rife. Some analysts believe that the election could be called in the November-December period while others have said that the GE could take place in the first quarter of 2020, after next year’s Budget.
On the same day that the ELD announced the formation of the EBRC, Mr Singh published a Facebook post in which touched on the uncertainty over the timing of the next election. He titled his Facebook post “Keep calm and keep walking”.
Revealing that he was conducting his regular house visits when the ELD announced the EBRC’s formation, Mr Singh pointed out that it was interesting that the authority did not state when in August the committee was convened.
Sharing about his meetings with residents during his house visits, Mr Singh said: “My wife and elder daughter were in the constituency waiting for me to finish housevisits today. While waiting, my daughter wanted to take a picture with “daddy and his friends”, and so mummy did the needful.
“Like the families I meet during house-visits, the love of my family keeps me going – be it an election this year or the next!”
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