50,000 People to be Trained for Election Duties; Some Have Reportedly Been Notified

By
Kimi Tan
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By now, you may have heard speculations about Budget 2024 being an “election budget”.

An election budget is one that is strategically crafted and announced in the lead-up to an election to appeal to voters and gain political support by offering incentives, tax cuts, or spending measures that are likely to be popular among voters.

Such budgets tend to prioritise funding for programmes or initiatives that are perceived to be beneficial to voters and may include measures aimed at addressing key issues or concerns raise during the election campaign.

And, yes, there are many many “ang baos” we’ll be getting from Budget 2024 since it was just confirmed. From CDC vouchers to tax rebates, there’s really something for everybody in this year’s Budget.

This sort of speculation about election budgets usually occurs when a General Election is set to happen in the very near future.

In case you didn’t know, yes, the next General Election will happen soon.

How soon?

The Next Singapore General Election

The next Singapore General Election must be called by November 2025.

This election will be Singapore’s first General Election since COVID-19 mellowed out; and as with all other elections, this will be many young adults’ first time voting.

In preparation, some 50,000 public servants are expected to be appointed and trained to manage nomination, polling, and counting activities ahead of the next election.

This was confirmed by the Elections Department (ELD) of Singapore in response to inquiries from CNA on 8 March, regarding whether the training of election officials had commenced.

Such public servants include teachers and individuals in various ministries and statutory boards.

Yes, even teachers are involved in this.

According to CNA, some of them have been notified.

The Elections Department (ELD) said it appoints and trains public officers “on an ongoing basis” to perform election duties to prepare the public service to conduct elections in Singapore.

In 2022, TODAY reported that some public servants had been notified of their appointment as election officials as early as six months before the 2023 Presidential Election.

In the same article, it was noted that for the 2020 General Election, public servants were called up for training about two years before polling. That timeframe was about 12 months for the 2015 General Election, 18 months for the 2011 General Election, and 31 months for the 2006 General Election.

What this means is that we have no idea when the next General Election will be. It could happen this year or we might have to wait nearly 20 months for it to happen.

And that’s not all.

New Prime Minister

This year not only marks the 20th year of Prime Minster (PM) Lee Hsien Loong’s term as Singapore’s PM, but may also be the start of a new era.

On top of the General Election, we can expect to have a new PM too. For the first time in years, we won’t say “PM Lee” anymore, but rather, “PM Wong”.

Last November, PM Lee announced his timeline for handing over leadership to Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) Lawrence Wong.

He said that “if all goes well”, the handover will happen by the PAP’s 70th birthday on 21 November 2024.

51-year-old DPM Wong was endorsed as the leader of the party’s 4G (fourth-generation) team in 2022 after 62-year-old DPM Heng Swee Keat stepped aside to let the younger DPM Wong, with a “longer runway”, take over.

“I intend to hand over to DPM Lawrence before the next GE,” said PM Lee.

So, we can expect very big things to happen this year.

Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:

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Kimi Tan