Singapore GE2020: Political broadcasts to air daily from today till July 9

The broadcast of the party fielding the least number of candidates will be aired first, and vice versa. ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI

The two party political broadcasts for the upcoming general election will be held today and next Thursday, while the new constituency political broadcasts will begin from tomorrow.

The Infocomm Media Development Authority yesterday announced that the party political broadcasts will be aired across 19 TV and radio channels from 8pm.

Since the 1980 election, parties that field at least six candidates under a recognised party symbol have been eligible for airtime on free-to-air radio and television.

Independents and political parties fielding fewer than six candidates under the same recognised party symbol are not eligible for party political broadcasts.

This means the People's Power Party, the Singapore Democratic Alliance, the Singapore People's Party and Red Dot United are not eligible to put out party political broadcasts.

The broadcast of the party fielding the fewest number of candidates will be aired first, and vice versa.

The amount of airtime allocated to each party is determined by the number of candidates it fields.

The time allocation is:

• Reform Party (six candidates): 21/2 minutes

• National Solidarity Party (10): three minutes

• Peoples Voice (10): three minutes

• Singapore Democratic Party (11): three minutes

• Workers' Party (21): 41/2 minutes

• Progress Singapore Party (24): five minutes

• People's Action Party (93): 13 minutes

Meanwhile, in between the two party political broadcasts, Singaporeans will be able to watch candidates speak in the constituency political broadcasts on Mediacorp's Channel 5 from 7pm, from tomorrow till next Wednesday.

Constituency political broadcasts are one-off arrangements to give parties and candidates more airtime to put their messages out to voters in view of the Covid-19 situation, which has meant that traditional election rallies, which typically attract thousands, are off the table.

Each candidate will get three minutes to speak, which means the broadcast for someone standing in a single-member constituency will last three minutes.

That for a group representation constituency will be 12 or 15 minutes, depending on whether it is a four or five-member GRC, and regardless of how many candidates speak.

Candidates can choose to speak in any of the four official languages of English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, the Elections Department had said on June 24.

This rules out dialects, which were sometimes used by candidates at previous election rallies.

The constituency political broadcasts will be televised based on the alphabetical order of the constituency, and the broadcasts for each constituency will start with the incumbent.

This means Aljunied GRC's Workers' Party slate will kick off the constituency political broadcasts and Yuhua SMC's Singapore Democratic Party candidate Robin Low will wrap things up.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on July 02, 2020, with the headline Political broadcasts to air daily from today till July 9. Subscribe