On 9 May, in a written reply to Gerald Giam, Workers’ Party MP for Aljunied Group Representation Constituency (GRC), the Minister-in-charge of the Public Service Chan Chun Sing revealed that the expenditures incurred by the Elections Department from the 2011 General Election (GE) to the 2021 GE have increased by almost S$17 million.
Gerald Giam’s had asked the following question:
The full numbers provided by Minister Chan Chun Sing are:
- 2011: S$13.5 million
- 2015: S$23.2 million
- 2020: S$30.3 million.
The Minister clarified in his written reply that:
Across elections, expenditure will fluctuate depending on manpower, infocommunications technology, transport, and other logistical needs. For example, GE2015 was fully contested unlike GE2011, and more election officials were deployed. Higher logistics costs were also incurred as election equipment such as polling booths and counting tables were due for replacement.
Regarding the Minister’s point that GE2015 was fully contested unlike GE2011, it is worth noting that there was only one walkover in GE 2011 (Tanjong Pagar GRC).
In his reply, the Minister also noted that for “GE 2020, which was held during the COVID-19 pandemic, almost $8m were spent on safe management measures.” Presumably, had it not been for the S$8 million incurred for safe management measures, the total cost would have been around S$22.3 million instead — a S$1 million decrease from the spending for GE 2020.
Election Department spending is independent from political party spending. In figures that were released shortly after GE 2020, it was shown Singapore’s political parties collectively spent about S$9.2 million on election spending.
Candidates from the People’s Action Party (PAP) spent S$6.97 million, while all opposition candidates spent S$2.19 million.
The highest spender of all the opposition parties was the Progress Singapore Party at S$781,275, followed by the Workers’ Party (WP) who spent S$705,647.
In group representation constituencies like Sengkang, the WP spent S$132,406, which was less than half of that spent by the PAP (S$364,371), and still won.
Across the island, the PAP spent about S$2.63 per voter, the WP spent S$1.21 per voter, the PSP spent $1.19 per voter and the SDP spent $1.01 per voter.
Since you have made it to the end of the article, follow Wake Up Singapore on Telegram!