Singapore held its General Election on July 10 – a little more than a month after the country started easing restrictions aimed at containing one of Southeast Asia’s largest Coronavirus outbreaks.
Singapore’s ruling party, the People’s Action Party (PAP), has never lost an election before and has governed the city state since 1959, before the country’s independence in 1965.
The Southeast Asian country is not the first to hold a national vote in the middle of the pandemic. South Korea in April held Parliamentary Elections that resulted in a decisive win for President Moon Jae-in’s party.
Those workers – usually men from other Asian countries working in low-wage, labour-intensive jobs – account for more than 90 percent of nearly 44,000 confirmed infections in Singapore, according to the Health Ministry’s data.
The total number of new cases reported daily still hovers in the hundreds. However, a decline in infections outside the dormitories led the Singapore Government to ease much of its partial lockdown measures last month, paving the way for the election to be held.
Still, some observers warned that infections in the wider community could climb in the lead-up to the July 10 vote.
“Any surge in community cases in the run up to the Polling Day might lead to criticism on the Government’s decision, and will, therefore, backfire (on) its approval rating,” consultancy The Economist Intelligence Unit said in a note last week.
The Coronavirus pandemic hit Singapore at a time when its open and trade-dependent economy was already feeling the effects of the U.S.-China trade war. Singapore is forecasting its worst economic recession since independence in 1965. The economy is expected to shrink by between four percent and seven percent this year, according to official estimates.
An election in the middle of the Coronavirus outbreak means political parties did away with the traditional way of campaigning. Chief among those is mass rallies – one of the most common methods for candidates to reach out to voters.
Door-to-door campaigning and community walkabouts were still allowed, subject to rules such as limiting each group to five, mask-wearing and keeping a safe distance, according to guidelines issued by the Elections Department.
To make up for the lack of physical rallies, political parties got more airtime to campaign on free-to-air television channels, the guidelines said. Candidates also live-streamed online rallies on Facebook and YouTube, it added.
Candidates could use vehicles - typically lorries or trucks outfitted with loudspeakers - to broadcast recorded messages. They were not allowed to speak, live-stream or broadcast music or videos from the vehicle. There were no thank-you vehicular processions after the Polling Day. Political parties had been told to watch out for foreign interference and cyber security risks during the election. They were asked to monitor their platforms for suspicious activity and not to share posts or tweets of suspicious provenance. They were told to protect their IT infrastructure and online accounts, as well as the storage and management of their data.
On the voting day, temperature screening and other hygiene measures were carried out at all polling stations, the department said. To avoid crowding, there were more polling stations, and voters were allocated a recommended two-hour time slot to cast their ballot, it added. Voter registration was done electronically, with people scanning their identity cards instead of handing them to officials. Voters had to pull down their masks for election officials to verify their identity vis-a-vis their ID. New self-inking pens, which allowed voters to easily stamp an “X” for the party of their choice, were used. This helped older voters who had difficulty in gripping regular pens. Voters were allowed to use their own pens if they wished. Cleaners were deployed at all polling stations to clean items and areas described as “common touch-points” such as the self-inking pens and polling booths. They did do so at least once every half an hour.
Everyone was required to wear a mask, and voters were expected to spend no more than five minutes in a polling station, where they had to scan their identity cards, sanitize their hands and put on disposable gloves before receiving a ballot paper. Singapore has 2.65 million eligible voters.
COVID-19 patients and those under quarantine could not vote, but a mobile polling team brought a ballot box to the rooms of Singaporeans who had recently returned from overseas and were in isolation at hotels. The election saw a voter turnout of nearly 96 percent.
The polls closed only at 10 pm (2 pm GMT), two hours later than previously planned as long queues formed at some polling stations due to the extra virus checks. Officials from the Elections Department Singapore apologized “for the wait and the inconvenience”. Instead of being manually processed, votes were tallied by counting machines. Counting was three times faster with the use of the machines.
According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, at least 45 countries and territories have decided to hold national or sub-national elections since late February despite concerns over the Coronavirus pandemic, while at least 67 countries have postponed their polls.
“The alternative was to wait out the COVID-19 pandemic, but we have no assurance that the pandemic would over before the end of the term of the existed-Government in April, and that is why I decided to hold the General Elections,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said. Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party maintained its unbroken grip on power in Friday’s General Election. (Agencies)
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