The Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) was formed on Aug. 1, 2019, Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing said in a written answer on Oct. 7.

Chan was responding to a Parliamentary question filed by Workers' Party (WP) chief Pritam Singh asking what date the EBRC was formed.

Announcement in Sep. 2019

Previously, in July 2019, Pritam had asked in Parliament if PM Lee can provide an update on whether the EBRC has been formed.

At that time, Chan stated that the committee had not been formed yet.

In an announcement on Sep. 4, 2019, however, the Singapore Election Department confirmed that the committee looking at the drawing of boundaries for electoral constituencies has been formed.

At that time, however, they did not clarify when the committee was set up.

After the EBRC releases its report, election period will start to kick in.

Typically, it can take anywhere between two to seven months for the EBRC to release their report.

For 2011 and 2006, the report was released after about four months. The quickest the committee took was in 2015, when it was released in just over two months.

How long will they take this time?

In Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s 2016 parliamentary speech at the debate of the President’s Address, he highlighted that he will instruct the EBRC to “reduce the average size of GRCs further, and to create more SMCs” for the next election.

This is to strike a good balance between large and smaller GRCs, as well as SMCs.

What this suggests is that there is more work to be done for the EBRC in this round, and they are perhaps likely to take a slightly longer than shorter period to release their report.

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Top photo screengrabs via gov.sg YouTube video.