The Electoral Affairs Commission for the Legislative Assembly Election confirmed that as of today it had approved five applications for legal status as submitted by respective nomination committees.

Speaking to reporters after this morning’s meeting of the Commission, its Chairman, Mr Tong Hio Fong, said a total of eight applications for legal status of nomination of committees had been submitted. Additional documentation was required from the three pending applications, he added.

The Legislative Assembly Election Law stipulates that only political associations and nomination committees have the right to nominate candidate lists for the process of direct election to the Legislative Assembly.

Applications for nomination committees for the 2017 election will close on 20 June. The election will be held on 17 September.

A nomination committee must contain at least 300 and no more than 500 voters. Such names can be drawn only from the official list of natural person voters.

Mr Tong said the Commission had so far identified 14 cases of an individual signing the nomination papers of more than one nomination committee. The Secretariat of the Commission met with seven of those involved to gain a better understanding of the reason for their duplicated signatures and would meet soon with the other individuals.

Mr Tong said the Commission would make a fuller analysis of the issue of multiple nomination – in line with requirements of the law – once the nomination committee formation phase had been concluded.

The Commission had stepped up efforts on educating voters that they were entitled only to endorse a single election team nomination committee, said Mr Tong. Nomination committees were duly obliged to remind voters of this fact when seeking a voter’s signature.