Next Singaporean General Election

General elections are due to be held in Singapore no later than 23 November 2025 to determine the composition of the fifteenth Singaporean Parliament. The elections will be the nineteenth in Singapore since 1948 and the fourteenth since independence.

For the first time since the 2006 general election, Lee Hsien Loong will not be leading the governing People's Action Party (PAP) into this election, as he was succeeded by Lawrence Wong as Prime Minister on 15 May 2024.

Background

Pursuant to Article 65 of the Constitution, the maximum term of Parliament is five years from the date of its first sitting following a general election, after which it is dissolved. However, the President can dissolve Parliament at any time during the aforesaid five-year period, if advised by the Prime Minister to do so, and if the President is satisfied that, in tendering that advice, the Prime Minister commands the confidence of a majority of the Members of Parliament (MPs). A general election must be held within three months after every dissolution of Parliament.

Electoral Divisions (also referred to as seats in Parliament) are organised into Single Member Constituencies (SMCs) and Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs). Each SMC returns one MP using the first past the post voting system, while each GRC returns four or five MPs by party block voting, at least one of whom must be from the Malay, Indian or other minority communities. A group of candidates intending to contest an election in a GRC must all be members of the same political party, or a group of independent candidates. The voting age in Singapore is 21 years. Elections are conducted by the Elections Department (ELD), a department under the Prime Minister's Office.

The returning officer for this election is Han Kok Juan, the Director-General of the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS). This will be his first election as Returning Officer, taking over from Tan Meng Dui who had served in this role in the previous general election.

The People's Action Party won a majority of seats in the 2020 general election in its toughest contest since independence, winning all but three electoral divisions (two GRCs and one SMC). It retained West Coast GRC in a fight against the Progress Singapore Party, though with the narrowest margin of victory among all electoral divisions; the top scoring GRC was the neighbouring Jurong GRC won by the party. The Workers' Party won the new Sengkang GRC and retained Aljunied GRC and Hougang SMC. Minister in the Prime Minister's Office and Secretary-General of the NTUC Ng Chee Meng, who had led the Sengkang PAP team, was considered the highest profile political casualty of the election.

Electoral boundaries

As of 2 July 2024, the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee has not been convened. In a statement by the Elections Department, the register was refreshed on 19 June 2024 and had inspection opened till 2 July. The latest certification for the Register of Electors was released on 21 July, announcing an electorate of 2,715,187.

Political developments

Vacated Seats

With a total of six seats vacated during the term, this parliament term had the largest vacation of seats post-independence since the inaugural parliament back in 1965, where a combined 14 seats were vacated (13 Barisan Sosialis and Ong Eng Guan of United People's Party).

List of vacated seats

People's Action Party

After the 2020 general election, the governing People's Action Party (PAP) appointed Heng Swee Keat as First Assistant Secretary-General, and next in line to succeed Lee Hsien Loong as Prime Minister during their Central Executive Committee (CEC) election, subject to the party winning a majority of seats in the next general election. Four new members, including three serving ministers and Ng Chee Meng, were also co-opted into the CEC.

In April 2021, Heng subsequently withdrew from and ruled himself out as the potential next prime minister, citing age and health concerns, though analysts also attributed the withdrawal to Heng's worse-than-expected result in East Coast GRC during the previous general election.

On 14 April 2022, Lawrence Wong was endorsed by an overwhelming majority of PAP MPs as the leader of the fourth generation (4G) of PAP leadership, placing him in line to succeed Lee as prime minister if the party wins a majority of seats in the next general election. On 13 June 2022, Lawrence Wong was appointed Deputy Prime Minister. This move further cemented his standing as the successor to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. It was announced on 5 November 2023 that Lee would hand over the office to Wong in 2024 before the party's 70th anniversary. The date was confirmed as 15 May 2024 in an announcement on 15 April 2024; Lee stepped down his post and passed his premier to Wong on that day. The new cabinet was also announced, with Gan Kim Yong promoted as the next-in-line Deputy Prime Minister and Lee conferred as a Senior Minister, though changes to the cabinet were minor until the next election.

On 7 July 2023, Tharman Shanmugaratnam resigned from all his positions in the government and as a member of the PAP in order to run for the 2023 presidential election, in which he would later go on to win.

On 12 July 2023, S. Iswaran was summoned to assist in an unspecified corruption investigation by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB). Upon being briefed on the investigation by the CPIB, Prime Minister Lee instructed Iswaran to go on a leave of absence with immediate effect until investigations ended, and subsequently suspending his duties as an MP; Chee Hong Tat was appointed as Acting Minister for Transport. On 15 July 2023, it was revealed that Iswaran had been arrested pursuant to the investigation and was released on bail on 11 July 2023. The investigation had also expanded to include billionaire businessman Ong Beng Seng, who was arrested at the same time.

CPIB's investigations were concluded on 9 January 2024 and was handed over to the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) for prosecution, according to a parliamentary reply given by Minister-in-charge of Public Service Chan Chun Sing. A week later, Iswaran resigned from the Cabinet and as the MP of West Coast GRC and member of the People's Action Party (PAP), following the charges against him by the AGC. In a follow-up letter the next day, he pledged to return the salary that he had received since the beginning of the CPIB investigation in July 2023 back to the government. The following day, State Courts of Singapore revealed that Iswaran had been charged of 27 offences, including charges of corruption and obstruction of justice, becoming the first cabinet minister since Teh Cheang Wan in 1986 to be charged for corruption; the charges against Iswaran, who pleaded not guilty, thus attracted several international news outlets to report on the case. Consequently, Chee Hong Tat succeeded Iswaran as Minister for Transport, while Grace Fu succeeded him as Minister-in-charge for Trade Relations.

On 17 July 2023, both Cheng Li Hui and Speaker Tan Chuan-Jin simultaneously resigned from Parliament and as members of the PAP due to "propriety and personal conduct", alluding to extramarital affairs. Prime Minister Lee, in response to their resignation letters, said in a statement that their resignations were "necessary" to "maintain the high standards of propriety and personal conduct which the PAP has upheld all these years." On 2 August 2023, Seah Kian Peng succeeded Tan as Speaker of Parliament.

Workers' Party

After the 2020 general election, the Workers' Party (WP) elected the four newly elected MPs in Sengkang GRC into the Central Executive Committee (CEC). Party leaders Pritam Singh and Sylvia Lim were re-elected unopposed. Former secretary-general Low Thia Khiang, who did not contest in the previous election because of an injury, confirmed that he had not retired from politics, although he did say that "to me, if I were to one day to offer myself as candidate, I think it's a back step, which I would not want to see that"; as of the recent CEC change on 30 June 2024, Low remains listed as a party's CEC member, so were the re-elections of secretary-general Singh and chairwoman Lim; among the new members were Ang Boon Yaw, Nathaniel Koh and Tan Kong Soon, while former Hougang SMC MP Png Eng Huat stepped down in 2022, and former (and now-defunct) Punggol East SMC MP Lee Li Lian was reinstated into CEC on 30 June 2024 after her absence in three years; Lee was currently working as a town councilor to Sengkang Town Council at the time of announcement.

Two seats have been vacated during the term. The first resignation occurred on 30 November 2021, after Raeesah Khan admitted to making unsubstantiated allegations in Parliament on three occasions. Upon interviewed by the Parliament's Committee of Privileges on Ms. Raeesah Khan, Parliament referred Party Leaders Pritam Singh and Faisal Manap to the public prosecutor for potentially misleading (lying) Parliament. Manap has since been advised by the police "to familiarise himself with the conduct expected of Members of Parliament". Singh has since been charged for lying to Parliament by the public prosecutor.

The second resignation occurred on 19 July 2023, with Leon Perera and Nicole Seah, president of the party's youth wing resigned from the party after a viral video surfaced an extramarital affair between Perera and Seah. The party had also expelled a former CEC and NCMP Daniel Goh in June 2023 over his Facebook posts questioning Khan's resignation and criticising the party leadership for "allowing the transgression to persist".

Progress Singapore Party

After the 2020 general election, Assistant Secretary-General Leong Mun Wai and Vice-Chairwoman Hazel Poa were appointed Non-Constituency Members of Parliament by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. A policy research team, youth, and women wings were also created as part of the reorganisation of the party. As of 2024, PSP's founder Tan Cheng Bock revealed he had not retired from politics, and continued his walkabout and rallying at West Coast GRC, the ward where it was their best-performing constituency for the party; however, neither Tan nor the team revealed further details at the time until the election date draws close.

The role for the party's Secretary-General had since taken over by Hazel Poa as of 20 February 2024, quashing speculations of a rift within the party that Tan had been pressured by party cadres to step down in order to make way for a younger candidate, after Tan Cheng Bock relinquished the role on 3 April 2021 to Francis Yuen; Yuen left the role on 26 March 2023 citing work commitments. NCMP Leong Mun Wai then held the role from 4 April until 20 February 2024, following complications over the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) for a post about financial aid to an elderly couple living at West Coast.

On May 13 2024, Assistant Secretary-General Ang Yong Guan – who is also a medical doctor and runs his own practice, Ang Yong Guan Psychiatry – was found guilty of three counts of professional misconduct for departing from guidelines in prescribing various medications to a patient, leading to the patient's death in 2012. The PSP has not yet taken any diciplinary action on Ang; PSP spokesperson said that "We respect the court’s decision and will discuss future plans with Dr Ang".

Extraparliamentary parties

Reform Party

Reform Party Secretary-General Kenneth Jeyaretnam removed Chairman Andy Zhu from his position of the RP's Central Executive Committee (CEC), and replaced him with Charles Yeo, alongside treasurer Noraini Yunus. The party accused Zhu and his associates, for improper procedures in the handling of the party's bank account. Zhu subsequently formed its splinter party, Singapore United Party, with several former members of RP. Osman Suliaman was among the members who resigned, but joined the Singapore People's Party instead.

Yeo relinquished his position on 15 January 2022 over arrests relating to alleged offences of criminal breach of trust and forgery in the course of his works.

Singapore Democratic Party

The Singapore Democratic Party had made preparations ahead of the election, and began their walkabout and campaigning around August 2023. They also have announced on contesting Sembawang GRC for the first time since the 2011 election. The party also relocated their headquarters to WGECA Tower on 11 November 2023.

Ahead of the announcement, two former MP-elects in the 1991 election died- on 30 April 2021, former chairman Ling How Doong due to pneumonia, then on 4 June 2024, former Nee Soon Central SMC MP and now-NSP member Cheo Chai Chen due to oesophageal cancer.

Parliamentary groups from other smaller parties

Two parliamentary groups of four existing or new parties were formed within four months in 2023, making it the first addition of a political umbrella since Singapore Democratic Alliance in 2001. In June 2023, Peoples Voice's chief Lim Tean founded the People's Alliance along with the Reform Party, People's Power Party and Democratic Progressive Party.

Four months later in October 2023, another group, The Coalition, was formed by the National Solidarity Party, Red Dot United, Singapore People's Party and Singapore United Party.

References

{{Singaporean elections

Singapore
2025