- Elections Department
The Elections Department is a department of the
government of Singapore that oversees the procedure forelections in Singapore , including parliamentary elections and presidential elections. It sees that elections are fairly carried out and has a supervisory role to safeguard againstelectoral fraud . It has the power to create constituencies and redistrict them, with the justification of preventingmalapportionment .Although the
President of Singapore has the authority to create group representationconstituencies of Singapore from several electoral wards, the Elections Department is generally the government authority which advises the President on which constituencies are created, and which constituencies are redistricted.The Elections Department is supposedly a neutral and impartial entity, but the opposition parties in the
politics of Singapore question whether there are true, clearseparation of powers between the current ruling party of Singapore, thePeople's Action Party (PAP), and the Elections Department.The Elections Department is under the office of the
Prime Minister of Singapore , and is able to draw polling districts and polling sites with pinpoint precision. Opposition leaders such asChee Soon Juan of theSingapore Democratic Party (SDP) accuse the Elections Department of not being politically separate from the ruling party. This, the opposition argues, leads to intentional carrying out ofgerrymandering on behalf of the PAP, like in the cases of Cheng San GRC and Eunos GRC. It is unlike anElectoral Commission in most other Commonwealth countries which is clearly independent of the ruling government. The redrawing has been mocked on a widespread basis, including satire websites such as TalkingCock.com.External links
* [http://www.elections.gov.sg/ Singapore Elections Department]
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