On Tuesday, 15 April 2025, Parliament was dissolved and the date for Singapore’s General Election 2025 (GE2025) was set for 3 May 2025.
An Overview/Recap of Our Advocacy
Last year, we at DPA conducted a survey to gather perceptions from persons with disabilities on their thoughts regarding the state of disability inclusion in voting on Polling Day and on the state of disability inclusion in voter engagement/outreach.
While there has been some discussion in the press over the years about accessibility features on Polling Day, there has been almost no discussion – whether in the journalistic or academic literature – pertaining to the state of disability inclusion in voter engagement and outreach in Singapore elections. This fact alone shows how Singapore has still a far way to go in terms of fostering an inclusive political environment.
Due to the then uncertainty of when the election would be called, we posted a summary of the findings and recommendations of the survey on our blog, while sending a copy of the key findings and recommendations to the Elections Department (ELD) and to each political party, in October 2024.
[Click here for a full report of the recommendations and findings from the survey.]
One of the more conclusive findings of the elections was persons with disabilities noting how they would like more discussion from political parties on their position on disability-specific issues.
To assist with this, we prepared a disability policy questionnaire – and sent it to each party – recommending each party to either take the questionnaire or to use it as a guide in shaping their policies and platforms for their campaigns in GE 2025. The questionnaire focused on the top three issues most important to persons with disabilities in our survey going into the upcoming GE – employment, financial assistance support, and transport/infrastructure accessibility. The questions in the questionnaire were based on actual questions persons with disabilities noted in their responses in the survey.
GE2025 and Going Forward
It is quite encouraging that for GE2025, a few political parties have made significant mention of disability in their proposals outlined in their respective manifestos.
We hope that such parties will make note of such proposals during their campaigns and for parties that did not make mention of disability in their proposals, we hope that they will do so in their upcoming campaigns.
However, it is important to highlight an aspect of Singapore elections that often does not get debated in the media – which is the incredibly short amount of time allowed for campaigning in Singapore elections.
In Singapore, there are only nine days allowed for campaigning. This is one of the shortest campaigning periods in electoral systems around the world.
A general election marks a reflection point in a country – it is a moment when citizens reflect on the state of the country and make a decision that will have significant impacts on policymaking for its future – in Singapore’s case, for the next four to five years.
This requires a rigorous scrutiny of the policy options before us as citizens, and the opportunity for there to be space for citizens to discuss the state of the country.
Yet, once again, as with previous GEs, there are only nine days of campaigning allowed.
Singapore has made progress on disability inclusion in a number of ways over the years. However, there is much more work that needs to be done. As outlined in the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2022 Concluding Observations to Singapore, there are many areas where Singapore is not aligned with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD).
It will be important for there to be a rigorous series of discussions and debates on the various policy proposal options by various parties during GE2025 for voters to be as informed as possible on which choice will best push Singapore closer to international best standards of disability inclusion such as that outlined in the UN CRPD. Yet, the short nine days permitted for campaigning does not make such a necessity likely.
The short campaigning period in Singapore elections is also not ideal for an inclusive political environment. For example, as it is, there is a lack of Singapore Sign Language (SGSL) interpreters in Singapore. Cramming all rallies and campaign events of all 33 constituencies into nine days will inevitably make ensuring an SGSL interpreter at all campaign rallies and events impossible. As it is, it takes a minimum of two weeks to book an SGSL interpreter – meaning that even if efforts were made to book SGSL interpreters when the election was called on Tuesday 15 April, an SGSL interpreter would likely only be able to cover the last two – three days of campaign rallies and events (even if there were enough SGSL interpreters).
This points to larger structural inequalities faced by persons with disabilities in Singapore. Extending the campaigning period to 1 – 2 months – as it is with many other parliamentary and electoral systems in other countries – will not solve the issue of a lack of investments in SGSL interpreters, but it will increase the likelihood that more campaign events and rallies will be able to be interpreted.
We thus hope that future elections will be more inclusive to take into consideration such structural inequalities faced by persons with disabilities.
In the short nine days ahead, we hope that there will at least be some discussion in the mainstream on how policy proposals will affect historically-marginalised communities such as disabled people and that such discussions will lead to a Singapore that is closer to international best standards found in the UN CRPD.
