Constitution of the Republic of Singapore (Amendment) Bill

Sir, I would like to go back to the basic where we mentioned that we prefer to have an appointed Presidency, together with eight elected Senators. Sir, I believe that this question has been asked over and over again, asking for clarification. What I can say is that we believe the basic, the fundamental, is that these eight elected individuals will do a better job than one Elected President.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir. In Malay, please.

(In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Mr Faisal Manap mentioned in his speech just now that among the issues raised in the report by the Commission was the issue of conflict between the President's symbolic and custodial roles and that was why they gave certain recommendations to have an unbundling or separation of duties.

But in the report, they also mentioned how to try to balance these duties that seem to conflict. And in addition, what they recommended is an appointed body. It is not similar to the suggestion by WP, that is, a Senate.

So, can the Member please clarify what is his view about this – because he kept referring to the report by the Constitutional Commission but the suggestions that he proposed are not at all similar to what the Commission suggested?

Mr Muhamad Faisal Bin Abdul Manap (In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.]  Sir, as stated by my colleague, Ms Sylvia Lim, we respect the views of the Constitutional Commission. However, we also have our own views and this view is different from that of the Commission. I have stated earlier in my speech that this view is inclined towards the view of the Constitutional Commission. I did not say that we agree with them totally. Hence, we have our own views whereby we said that the elected Senators are a better option than a body that is not elected, in order to retain its moral authority and also to receive the mandate from the people.

Mr Muhamad Faisal Bin Abdul Manap (In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Sir, my apologies, the reply to that question will be a bit long, but I will try to go back to the main points.

Yes, the report by the Constitutional Commission contains many proposals. Just like the Government. They also did not choose certain proposals. Although they have studied it, they decided to choose some proposals.

It is the same with me. I think I showed that the WP's view is inclined towards certain things stated by the Constitutional Commission. Hence, I used what was there to explain why we agree and why we disagree with certain proposals.

Ms Rahayu Mahzam (In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.]  So, what is your basis and your stand? The issue that you presented was that you felt that it was important to speak about the concerns of the Malay community on this issue. And later, when you spoke about the issue, you now say that you do not agree to have a reserved election for the Malay community. How can this Senate improve and take care of the concerns of the Malay community compared to the proposals by the Government?

Mr Muhamad Faisal Bin Abdul Manap (In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Sir, by having a Senate, yes, it has nothing to do with the matter of taking care of Malay issues.

As I stated earlier, we do not discount the importance of taking care of Malay issues or giving the Presidency to the Malays. We did say that the issue of minorities not having a chance to become a President can be resolved by having a rotational system for the appointed Presidency. So, what I said was that the Malay issues or the concerns of the Malay community can also be taken care by the appointed President.

Sir, I just have a question of clarification for the hon Member so that I can understand. The Member, therefore, does not agree that there should be a reserved election for the Malay community or any other minority, is that correct?

Sir, I did not mention that in my speech. What I mentioned is that instead of allowing the minority to hold the office of Presidency, it can be addressed by reverting to the appointed President scheme.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I just need one clarification from the hon Member Mr Faisal Manap. He alluded to the halal kitchen, implying that there are no Malay National Servicemen serving in the Navy ships.

I am just wondering if he is aware that there are actually Malay National Servicemen serving in our Navy ships and provisions are made where possible to provide them with their dietary requirements.

Sir, the issue was brought up at the Committee of Supply debate. I mentioned this issue today on the basis that the Malay community are still unhappy and are still having some concerns about the issue of loyalty.

Sir, as I mentioned just now, it is not part of my speech. But I would like to address the point where I did mention during the Committee of Supply debate that there is no doubt there is progress being made in the Singapore Armed Forces on the whole in getting Malays to assume those sensitive posts. I mentioned this quite a number of times in this Chamber.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I rise in support of this Bill. This Bill relates to the proposed changes to our Constitution, which include, amongst other things, having a mechanism to ensure multi-racial representation for the Office of the Elected Presidency.

Allow me to share two everyday examples where, without active intervention, minority representation would not be achieved due to our demographic of having more than 70% Chinese population.

Every now and then, there would be articles on what should be Singapore's National Dish. Based on Internet searches, Hainanese chicken rice is the unanimous first choice, followed by chilli crab in second place, and laksa in third place.

Every time I come across one of these National Dish articles posted by local food bloggers, I cringe a little. Hainanese chicken rice and chilli crab are typically non-halal dishes. I wonder how our Muslim friends and residents would feel after reading these articles.

Imagine then, as a nation, we would have to vote for one dish as the National Dish. I am afraid that it is likely to be either Hainanese chicken rice or chilli crab. Nasi lemak or roti prata would not have a chance. How then would our minority citizens feel?

I am glad that we do not have to vote for one National Dish as it would be impossible for one dish to reflect the rich diversity of our multiracial, multicultural society.

Closer to home, at my constituency in Nanyang, many of the grassroots volunteers and residents like to sing, and I realised that many of them choose to sing Chinese or Hokkien songs when we have karaoke at grassroots events.

At a recent dinner, after listening to several Chinese and Hokkien songs, I was also asked to sing on stage. So, I chose an English oldie "Always on my mind". I reminded the audience that we should be mindful that we have non-Chinese volunteers and residents amongst us, so we should also sing some non-Chinese songs. Similar to the recommendation for Elected Presidency, I am toying with the idea that after every five Chinese or Hokkien songs, the next singer must sing English, Malay or Tamil songs.

Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is human nature that we generally feel more comfortable with people who have more in common with us. In a recent television documentary "Regardless of Race" hosted by Member Janil Puthucheary, there was one scene where Janil visited Townsville Primary School and asked some school children what race is their best friend. It is telling that, for most of the children, their best friend is someone of the same race, thus showing that even from a young age, it is natural for someone to feel more affinity with another person of the same race.

One of the amendments proposed in this Bill is to provide for a Presidential Election to be reserved for a community if no person belonging to that community has held the Office of President for five presidential terms.

Deputy Speaker, Sir, our President is a symbol of our national identity, representing all Singaporeans, and multiracialism is an important aspect of Singapore's social fabric and remains fundamental to our unity and survival. I agree with the introduction of the hiatus-triggered mechanism to ensure minority representation in our highest office. However, is a gap of five presidential terms, which is about 30 years, considered too long? I hope the Government would monitor public sentiments in this respect and to make the appropriate adjustments in future, if necessary.

Once again, thank you, Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me the chance to share my thoughts on this, and I reaffirm my support for the Bill.

Sir, the Office of the Presidency in these days of increasing diversity amongst our people can have an even bigger unifying role to play.

A few years ago, I said in this House, "How do we find as much common ground as possible? I believe it will be best done through strengthening institutions that are non-partisan and capable of commanding the respect and allegiance of all Singaporeans, in spite of their political differences. Make these institutions inclusive and focus on our common objectives. The office of the Presidency, for example", I said.

Indeed, President Tony Tan, in his swearing-in ceremony, said, "I will strive to strengthen our common bonds and our core values that underpin our society. Whatever your political views, I will strive to the best of my abilities to represent you".

Do the proposed amendments before us strengthen the Presidency in this important unifying role? Does an enforced reservation of Presidential Elections to particular groups of Singaporeans defined along racial lines best help the Elected President play a unifying role?

We believe that Singaporeans, when called upon, will rise to the occasion to choose their Head of State based on the person's character and achievements, regardless of race, language or religion.

Does a tightened, narrower set of eligibility criteria help the Elected President unify a broader group of Singaporeans? Tightened eligibility criteria have been advanced as a proxy for the suitability and competency of the candidate for President. We are told that more stringent criteria are necessary for a President to perform his or her custodial functions in our bigger and more expansive times.

But these tightened eligibility criteria have their own costs. They reduce the number of men and women who could be President at a time when we understand that good men and women for the job are so hard to find. We focus on the benefits of selecting our President from a smaller pool of eligible candidates with the requisite "merit" – the merit that we feel we are able to define – but there are also costs to our society of thereby excluding, by our definition, other candidates with qualities that may be harder to approximate. Other qualities of a good President, which are no less important than this financial savvy that the eligibility criteria try to fathom.

In this House, just these two days, we have heard that the President should also be of good character, honest, selfless, willing to serve, independent, "able to think for himself", and should have integrity, judgement and courage.

Sir, these are human qualities, not angelic ones. With the proposed tightened eligibility criteria, how many of our former Presidents – Yusof Ishak, Benjamin Sheares, Devan Nair, Wee Kim Wee – would have been found ineligible to serve, even if they were ready and eager to do so, and in the eyes of vast numbers of Singaporeans, be qualified to do so? How many other Singaporeans?

Why are we seeking to restrict further the number of men and women who could be President? Has any of our Elected Presidents – Ong Teng Cheong, SR Nathan and Tony Tan – behaved so untowardly that we feel corrective action is needed to limit the number of eligible candidates from, say, qualifying companies with paid-in capital of at least $100 million, to those with shareholders' equity of at least $500 million?

We are told that the Elected Presidency system is working well and by these proposed amendments what we hope to do is anticipate problems before they appear. If that is the case, without an existing identifiable and specific thing to fix, then it behoves us to be even more humble about the possibility of unintended consequences of keeping out credible presidential candidates by what is proposed here today.

Even just looking at the custodial functions of the President, why are we seeking to restrict further the number of men and women who could be President by eliminating the non-executive chairmen of eligible companies from consideration, where both the chairmen and the chief executive officers used to qualify under the current rules? If we were to look at the constitutional functions to be performed by the President, including the custodial functions currently required, can we not say that they are in many ways more like those of a non-executive chairman than an executive officer?

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I rise in support of the Bill but I must say I am rather confused by some of the statements that have been made by Members of the Opposition. And the answers that they have given for some of the clarifications that have been sought have not actually provided any degree of clarity.

Firstly, I would like to address the issue of the NCMP, which Mr Dennis Tan brought up. The NCMP does have a mandate. There were people who voted for the NCMP. The NCMP can serve in a Town Council, they are not required to, unlike an elected MP, but all kinds of people can serve in a Town Council and can be appointed by MPs, including NCMPs from the same party. The opportunity is there.

And in service, that is how we define ourselves for all the people that we serve. We do not serve just the voters who elected us. We serve our constituents. And the same is true for the Elected President. Yes, the process of an election can be divisive, it can be contestable, it should be contestable. But, afterwards, we choose to come together.

This is a principle that is not unique to Singapore. It actually happens in many, many systems around the world and people expect that after the election there is a reconciliation. And part of the reconciliation is a recognition from the people that the person occupying that office serves everybody, and a recognition from the person elected that his or her duty is to serve everybody, regardless of the electoral choices in the first instance.

Elections are difficult. They are potentially divisive. The details are vital to get right. But I am glad that the WP, the Opposition, has repeatedly enumerated their support for the electoral process. Again and again, we hear about the elections for a Senate, the senators. This is an issue, perhaps, of labelling. They say they do not support the Presidency but yet they are taking the custodial powers of the President and devolving it to eight senators. Realistically, these are now eight Presidents. These are the same custodial powers that were vested in the President that have now been divided across eight Senators.

So, they are taking one Elected President and are now saying that we need to have eight elected Senators. Or I am going to call them eight elected Presidential Senators; we can make up the names.

This is confusing. They fundamentally believe that the custodial powers should go with an electoral process. We believe that is so. And yet they believe that having those custodial powers divided over eight people is somehow better than having it in one person. The only reason they had given is this "wisdom of a crowd", I believe it was the phrase that was used, or "the collective wisdom", that somehow, automatically, collective wisdom is better.

This is not a small change. It is an extraordinarily radical proposal. It is a major overhaul of our entire Presidential system and, possibly, our political system. And yet they are accusing the PAP Government of rushing this through when, in fact, this has been debated and discussed in public and in this House repeatedly from our side of the House. But they did not put this proposal forward, they did not submit this proposal to the Constitutional Commission, they did not submit it for public scrutiny or public debate. At the last minute, when the vote is tomorrow on this Bill before us, we hear of this extraordinarily radical proposal to take apart our President, make it symbolic and elect another eight people who are effectively the custodial Presidents.

The issue of being humble if you are making a radical change, I take Mr Chen Show Mao's point absolutely. We should be humble and not suggest something so completely radical when the proposal before the House is an amendment to strengthen and adjust the existing system. The Bill before the House is not about whether we should have an electoral process. The Bill before the House is not whether we should completely upend the system. The Bill before the House is how do we strengthen the existing Elected Presidency.

The lack of clarity extends to this issue of inclusion versus exclusion. They seem not to actually fundamentally understand what it is that the Presidential Electoral Commission does. And, repeatedly, the issue of the financial criteria, the number of people who are available, the types of businesses that are available, are brought up. The assumption is that if you do not meet those criteria, you are excluded from being a candidate for President.

That is not the case. This is an inclusive process. If you meet those criteria, the Commission is required to then pass you through. There is still a deliberative track where candidates who do not automatically qualify can put themselves forward and a case has to be made for why those candidates should be allowed to stand.

In contrast, what they proposed as a Senatorial Electoral Commission is an exclusive criterion because there is a hard stop at the 16th man or woman who will stand. What separates out at 17th person from that 16th person? That is an absolute exclusion criterion. If you are the 17th person, whether you ran a $100 million company, whether you are someone in the people sector, whether you ran a $1 billion company, for whatever reason, under their proposal, the Senatorial Electoral Commission can exclude you.

We have had some back and forth about whether the criteria are similar to the existing Presidential candidate criteria, but if the pool of candidates that come forth every year change, if you had to select 16 out of 24, versus 16 out of 100, then those criteria are going to change year on year. Where is the transparency there? It is going to be arbitrary for a non-elected body to then decide who will be elected in. It is not the public. Under the existing system, the Presidential Electoral Commission can put anybody who meets the criteria forward and it is the public then who has ultimate scrutiny over the process. Whether there is one, two, three or 100, it is the public then who decides about the integrity of this person who stands. It is the public then who makes the decision about what are the values that are expressed and how did this individual demonstrate those values in the conduct of their duties, whether it was a $100 million company, whether it was a $500 million company, whether they are a community volunteer or whether they were in the Public Service. It is for the public to make those decisions!

If you have an exclusionary criterion where a non-elected body keeps people out, that is the complete opposite of democracy. It is an autocracy. That is what the proposal put before the House today is about. We are being asked to consider the difference in their Option B versus our Option A, the difference between a strengthening of our democracy and the assignment of an autocracy to an appointed body, where an appointed body can keep people out. How will this strengthen the multiracial fabric of our nation?

I have a direct question for Mr Faisal Manap who is not here. A direct question: does he or does he not support the reserved election for a Malay candidate? It is a straightforward question. If he cannot answer a yes or no, how do you expect a referendum to be constructed around this? Yes or no, do you support the proposal that there will be a reserved election for a Malay candidate after many decades? It is a very simple question.

Or does he prefer for that electoral mandate and for that custodial power that our next Malay President could have, to be removed, and so our next Malay President will be, by his direction, a symbol only with no custodial power? What is going to be better for the Malay community? What is going to be better for all of us, regardless of our race and the colour of our skin? For that President, that Malay President, to have only symbolic powers, or to have a combination of symbolic and custodial powers, and to have stood in an election, even if it is an election against another Malay. It is still an electoral mandate that will be handed to the winning candidate by the people, and not by the WP, or whoever has been appointed by Parliament. It will not be an autocracy. It will be a strengthening of our democracy.

These are serious issues, serious proposals and, frankly speaking, serious problems in some of the proposals that have been put up by Option B by the WP.

There are a number of inconsistencies. Do you support more electoral processes or do you support less electoral processes? Do you want the Malay President to have custodial powers or only have a symbolic election? Do you want the power to rest in the people ultimately or do you want an appointed body?

The misunderstandings about what the CPA does have been brought up again and again. The implication that the CPA can step forward and block Parliament, when it is for Parliament to put matters up to the President in the first place. Parliament becomes the initiator of the process, and the President does not. And the CPA, as proposed, only advises the President. And the decision-making – whether it is four, whether it is one extra casting vote, is only about the bar that is then set for Parliament, and ultimately Parliament then has to make the legislative decision.

These are falsehoods or misunderstandings or implications, but they are not true. The proposals need to be studied properly.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I have alluded to and highlighted a number of inconsistencies and problems with the positions and statements of the Opposition. What could possibly be the cause, the driving force that led them in this direction? It could be suggested that there is a lack of understanding, incompetence. I do not believe so. I absolutely do not believe so. They have a bench with lawyers, economists, academics, people who have served in our uniformed services, people who have served in academic institutions, people who have served running organisations and run Town Councils. It could be malice but I do not believe so. These are not malicious people. People do not step forward and give of their time to serve in politics with the intention to be malicious. It is a hard, difficult choice to make in your life and you do it for good reasons. Why then?

Frankly speaking, it is merely the product of the adversarial nature of the Westminster system that we have inherited and that we have here today. It is the product of electoral politics. It is the natural outcome of contestable politics. They are doing what they need to do to attack, take issue with the Government and, if possible, take down our proposals. This is precisely why there is a need for a process that stands outside and above this House. They have demonstrated in their approach, in their ability to try to obfuscate, to add confusion, to misdirect and imply malice on our part. They have demonstrated exactly why we need a process and an office that stands apart and stands above.

For the Opposition to do otherwise – to not oppose, to not attack, to not question – frankly speaking, would be difficult. It would be especially difficult from an electoral viewpoint because any difficult Parliamentary issue can potentially risk votes. It takes great courage, confidence and determination to support a Motion or a Bill that goes against the expressed views of your core party supporters.

It takes courage and vision to put the interests of the nation first. It takes courage to identify and go against any facet of human nature. And it is difficult to change your mind once you have stated your position, especially if you have stated your position publicly. Once you have had a firm stance and you have engaged in battle – whether in word, in print – how to change it?

But this House, this Chamber and its predecessor have repeatedly seen examples of such courage, confidence, determination and vision. We have had a clear demonstration in recent times, of how a government and a political party can change its views, change its position, change its policies in response to the needs and aspirations of the country and our people.

In the short time since I was elected in 2011, I have seen several examples – Pioneer Generation Package, MediShield Life, compulsory education for special needs kids, maternity leave, changes to provisions for single mothers, many others – each one of those welcomed with applause in the House, welcomed with cheers outside. Because there is a recognition that our policies and positions need to adapt to best serve our country and our people. Just as our own views can change, our own personal views can change. As was alluded to, perhaps Assoc Prof Daniel Goh's views have changed, perhaps the WP's views have changed.

Just as my own view, on the mechanism for the minority representation on the Elected Presidency has changed since the proposal was first published. The need for any kind of safeguard in our electoral and political processes, it reminds us of the less-than-perfect human nature that we have to deal with.

As the Prime Minister mentioned in his quote of James Madison about angels, the need for safeguards reminds us how imperfect we are. We wish that it was not so. We wish that it was a much nicer world where we would not need such a mechanism. But we have to deal with the reality around us, we have to decide if we are going to hold a position as a marker of an ideal for the future, or deal with the reality here and now – deal with what our people face and the issues that we have to help them with.

So, on the issue of the five-term hiatus and the reserved election, I have changed my own mind since I first heard about it and I fully support the Bill for all the various reasons that have been described by the Members of this House.

So, with an understanding of why the Opposition does what it does – you may or may not agree with me – an understanding of the opportunities that there are in this House to make lives and things better for Singapore and Singaporeans, and I believe you do agree with me, which is why you serve here.

Embracing the possibility for change that I have just described, I want to propose a radical idea – I have a proposition – a proposition for the Opposition: I propose that the Opposition support the Bill. Change your mind, lose and leave behind your intransigence on this matter that has lasted more than 20 to 25 years.

Tomorrow, we will need to vote. This is a Constitutional amendment. We will need to vote and the process is called a division. It does not have to be divisive. What if in this one instance, we could have a demonstration of unity? You may ask: how could you possibly vote? How could you possibly vote to support this Bill? You may also ask why you should possibly vote.

Well, let me tell you why you should possibly vote "yes" to support this Bill, why you should stand with the "ayes". This is a Bill that strengthens our democracy, this is a Bill that strengthens our processes. It stands in the same vein as those processes that established a separate Civil Service that works for all Singaporeans without fear or favour. It stands in the same vein as our Armed Forces that swear loyalty to the Constitution and the President, and will do what is necessary for our country regardless of politics. It stands in the same vein that we have an Auditor-General and an Attorney-General that does what it has to do to uphold the law, to uphold the best principles of our Constitution and integrity and not to serve a political agenda. It does all these and more.

It strengthens the role of NCMPs and gives voice to people who perhaps have not had a voice before. It strengthens the diversity in this House. It allows our first Malay Elected President after many decades. And it guarantees that we will have an Elected President with representation across all the races. It does all these and more.

And in its mechanism for that multiracial Elected Presidency, it has a natural sunset where, over time, that mechanism may no longer be needed.

And, so, you have built in into this Constitutional amendment. I believe one of the first times we can identify when we might truly arrive in the future as that ideal multiracial state. Not when we have an open contested election of various races. That would just be the start. We need to have a few of those. We need to have a minority candidate that loses and loses gracefully, not because of his or her colour of the skin but because he or she was not the best person for the job.

And, finally, we will need in this House, standing at one of these podiums, someone from one of the political parties to stand up and propose a Constitutional amendment to remove the five-term hiatus and the reserved election mechanism. And then we will know that there is political confidence that we can do so because there are no votes at risk, and we will have arrived at that ideal state as a multiracial nation.

For all these reasons, you should support the Bill. But how could you support the Bill, given the position you have taken?

First of all, you need to understand and you need to convince people within your party and your core supporters that the Bill before you is not about whether we should have an Elected Presidency or not. You can continue to hold that line and support this Bill. The matter before us that we are debating is, given that we are going to have an Elected Presidency, what kind of Elected Presidency should we have?

This is the reality of political progress and political compromise. There is no point having an extreme absolutist view and refuse to engage on what is the reality in front of you. Having an absolutist, an extremist view is never going to be productive in politics. We need progress, we need some compromise.

The matter of whether the President should be elected, we have talked about why and how. That has already been settled. So, by voting in support of this Bill, you can still hang on to your party's principled position and accept the reality of today. And the reality is that Singaporeans want to vote for the President. Your constituents, the vast majority of all our constituents, whether they voted for the WP or any other Opposition candidate, they voted in the Presidential Election. They may have supported different candidates, but they expressed a democratic voice. They support the idea of an Elected Presidency and they will not accept having that democratic voice removed.

Could you not consider adapting to that world view after 25 years? Could you not demonstrate the ability to change, just as you expect other people to change? I have suggested why the Opposition could vote for the Bill with a clear conscience. I hope they will. We have heard several times now how symbols matter, and I think this could be one the most important reasons why I believe they should. Symbolism is important not just in terms of words, flags and badges or a person, although all those are important. But perhaps, more importantly, in the symbolism of our actions.

One of the most memorable images for me in this in this debate was the image evoked by Minister Yaacob Ibrahim of his whole clan turning up at Paya Lebar Airport to send off his brother. And you can imagine the joy, the celebration, the fun that they had coming together as a family. And family, being very loosely defined, the whole clan turned up. We instantly, instinctively understand his description. We smile. We wish all of our families could behave in that way all the time. We know what it means and why it is important.

But why? Why is this important? The plane is not going to fly any faster. The journey is not going to be any safer because the whole town full of people turn up. Your well wishes can be written on a card, your goodbyes can be spoken on the phone. Loving words can be said at home, you do not have to go all the way to the airport. But no, it is the action of accompanying that person, that action of going together as a family, of coming together as a family, and standing there and waving through the glass. We understand this matters, and it demonstrates something, in a symbolism far more powerful than any words or expressed wish might demonstrate. They stand together as one even though some of them may be very distant relatives. The action says, "We are one, and together we are here for you."

Today, here, and tomorrow, we have a Bill to strengthen our Presidency and our nation. The President is meant to be an office that rises above politics, that acts as a symbol of national unity, that takes a long-term view, and that protects our national interest over and above anything else. This debate will become part of our historical record. Imagine how the record might demonstrate that, in this House, we might have had a real engagement of ideas where people are open to what is being said and not just who is saying it. A real discussion of policies and proposals, where sometimes we are persuaded by the debate, that this is not just merely the transmission of a prepared speech, that we are listening to one another and engaging in a contest of ideas. And a contest of ideas requires people to be open to persuasion.

Demonstrate in your actions tomorrow by voting for the Bill to strengthen our system and our country. Vote and demonstrate the spirit behind the words, "Mari kita bersatu, dengan semangat yang baru." Show that sense of unity, show that sense of purpose in support of a strengthening democracy here in Singapore. Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I support the Bill. [Applause.]

I would like to thank the hon Member Dr Puthucheary for what was genuinely a very eloquent and very interesting speech. I would like to engage with some of his ideas.

Firstly, and most importantly, we have argued that subjecting the office of the Presidency to an election runs the risk that that election will inevitably become a proxy GE, will become politicised. As a result of that process, the Elected President that emerges from there with a mandate that is less than 50% will be seen in a political light and will, therefore, have his or her ability to unify the entire country severely curtailed.

We have suggested returning to an appointed President that can rise above politics and to take the custodial power currently vested in the Elected President and to place it into an elected Senate. That would be the advantage of having a President like President Yusof Ishak who is seen as above politics.

So, my first clarification to the Minister is what would be his strategy for ensuring that the Elected President, if we continue to elect presidents, is seen to be above politics? That is the first clarification.

The second one is that Dr Puthucheary pointed out that we are rushing to a new conclusion about the elected Senate. I would like to clarify that we were actually not arguing that Parliament should vote for an elected Senate during this debate. We are arguing that the country should go through a referendum on this issue. Why does he disagree that the country should go through a referendum on this issue? Mr Edwin Tong said that it is because it is time-consuming, it is resource-intensive, it is energy-sapping. Does he agree with that point of view? That is my second question.

My third question is a very simple one. The Member made a rather extraordinary statement that a President appointed by Parliament is an autocrat and that amounts to an autocracy. Does he believe President Yusof Ishak was an autocrat?

If I may begin with your last one, I did not imply that our President would be an autocrat. I suggested that the use of an appointed body in the process of the Senatorial Electoral Commission, a non-elected body, to then prevent people arbitrarily from standing for election on a moving target year-on-year ‒ because you have a different pool of candidates ‒ amounted to an autocracy, that you would not then expose the 17th and downstream candidates to the scrutiny of a vote and for the public to make their choice. So, that was your last question.

The first question was about politicisation and the second was the misuse of?

Can the President be a unifying figure, after being subject to an election that is vulnerable to the tinge of partisanship?

Yes. On the issue of a unifying figure, the Member is absolutely right that it is not easy to be a national unifying figure. But were not all our past Presidents national unifying figures, including those that had gone through an election? The issue of a unifying figure is not automatic to the process. It is something that you have to discharge in your duties. And that judgement as to whether someone can fulfil the role, is that not something that the public of Singapore are in a position to make a judgement about?

Secondly, if you have a concern about one election being politicised, how is your Senatorial election any less politicised? And in actual fact, because you have to put up a slate of 16 candidates, surely that opens up a can of worms in terms of the opportunity for politicisation amongst those 16 candidates. Any one of the elected candidates, by definition, is going to have lesser of the vote share than any Elected Presidency who ‒ well, depending on how many Elected Presidents are under our current system ‒ but you will have one-eighth, right? Because your vote is divided across eight people. So, the issue now is, in your Option B, whether you see the Senatorial process as equivalent to what we have currently as the Elected Presidential process, and I am putting it to you that those eight people are equivalent to our single President now, for two major reasons.

The custodial powers that are currently vested in our President will be vested in them. Secondly, the criteria for becoming a Senator are as stringent ‒ but I would argue, even more stringent because of the exclusionary process that you have proposed.

Under the system currently we are proposing, there is no maximum limit on the number of people who can stand. But under your system, it is not that you have come down to 0.2%; you have come down to 16 individuals across the whole of Singapore. You cannot have a 17th person standing. So, the proposal you have would be more politicised than our current system. More politicised than our proposal. It will have an increasing dilution of the vote share and it would be increasingly exclusionary because fewer people would potentially be able to stand for elections.

So, I fail to see how you articulated that it is a better proposal than what we have currently or what we are proposing on the grounds of the concerns that you yourself have raised. That is my position. I hope I have explained everything.

On the issue of a referendum, history and the world around us have demonstrated that referendums need to be crystallised into simple issues. Pressing, urgent, simple issues. Is this pressing? Well, it does not need to happen today, it does not need to happen tomorrow. You could not justify that you have a referendum tomorrow, next week or next month. But the reality is that this is a complex issue. In this House, amongst us, we are debating the intricacies of how that Senatorial Electoral process would occur. How do you convey that on the ballot box? How do you convey exactly how you operationalise one complex system versus another complex system? Fundamentally, this is exactly what happened in Brexit where two very complex proposals were reduced to a referendum. And, as has been admitted repeatedly, many people who voted had no idea what they were voting for.

There is another proxy for a referendum. It is called the GE. That had been done before where the PAP Government put up its manifesto proposals for the Elected Presidency as part of the electoral process. If you wanted a referendum by proxy, it would be very simple for the WP to then stand in the next GE and articulate every single point of how they would operationalise a non-Elected Presidency and set up a Senatorial body as part of their electoral manifesto. And that would be a referendum if the WP became the government and the PAP Government did not.

But I return the question to you. If you feel that a referendum is important and people have exercised their choice, then do you not respect the choice that people made in the previous time when they did so, where they chose the PAP Government that stood on a platform of Elected Presidency? That was the choice of the people.

So, I return to the idea. The idea of an Elected Presidency has been settled. What we need to do is to debate and take it forward. Taking it forward is: how do we operationalise the Elected Presidency?

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would suggest that the possibility of politicisation of the Senatorial race is not a red herring. Actually, that is the key. There is absolutely no reason not to politicise this. You have every reason to politicise this. If you believe that the Presidential race can be politicised, and now you have the opportunity to insert eight candidates into part of your political system, why is this any different? So, I think to brush aside the concern of possible politicisation of the Senatorial race and yet say it is still valid for the Presidential race, you are not making a logical argument there. If it is possible for the Presidency race to be politicised, it is just as possible, if not more so, for that politicisation to apply to the Senatorial race.

The WP did not put this proposal on their 2015 GE manifesto either. I am not suggesting that it was in 2015 where this was part of the public consciousness. This was settled long before I came on the scene, but the issue before us is not about whether we have the Elected Presidency. It is not of that nature. We have had one referendum: should we merge with Malaysia?

A referendum should be reserved for fundamental issues of sovereignty, of the kind of the nation that we want to be. This is a Bill before the House to strengthen our political, democratic and constitutional processes. It is complex.

You heard the Deputy Prime Minister's speech yesterday. How many Articles and issues and all the various clauses? You hear the confusion in this House today. How is this going to be reduced to a "yes", "no" referendum? So, the issue of whether referendum exists or do not exist, they exist as part of the system. There is an extraordinarily high bar set for the types of things that you put forward as a referendum to the public. That bar should be high. But it exists and the option is there.

Below that bar, we are elected into this role to serve the public and not return to them the responsibility for making laws for this country, for strengthening our democracy and for strengthening our processes. That is the responsibility that we have been elected into this role for. And so, therefore, a GE becomes a proxy for the voice of Singaporeans.

They have appointed us as lawmakers. Now, we do not take that absolute approach and, in between a proposal or a discussion, we have an extended period of public scrutiny and public session, which is exactly what we have done – nearly a year of public hearings, a Constitutional Commission, debate in print, debate in person, engagements. We have not rushed this.

And I contrast that again with your proposal which you have come here to the House. The details have not been worked out. Fundamental details of whether this will actually in any way address your concerns have not been worked out. What you are asking to do is to immediately go out and put it to a referendum. How can that be seen as responsible politics?

You have not submitted this to the Constitutional Commission where you would have had independent legal experts and all the various minds that applied themselves to this series of problems that you have highlighted to examine your proposals. You have not had your proposals out there in the public for debate by a variety of commentators, from the lay public to renowned experts and academicians.

All of which has happened. We have had an extensive public debate and then we have capped that off with a debate in the House. This is meant to be the final lap of an extensive consultative process, an extensive engagement process and, at the eleventh hour, you throw this in here and you expect that it is done seriously and taken seriously by the Members of this House and the public, which would be fine if you had done the homework.

Frankly speaking, if you understood how the CPA works currently and what the actual proposals that have been in print under the White Paper for a good long period of time and then debated those and what you think those changes are, we can take that forward. But you have not done so. You kept silent; you kept quiet; you kept your cards in reserve. You play politics with this issue which I do not blame you for. You are politicians; we are politicians. But that is not how we take an issue like this forward. I hope I have answered your questions.

I will try, Mr Deputy Speaker, to rise above my human nature. The issue of saving the Presidency is a false argument because the Presidency that you are proposing is a fundamentally different Presidency from what we have today and what we are proposing in the future. It retains only its symbolic nature. So, you are saving the Presidency by removing the opportunity for an electoral mandate because he or she will no longer have a custodial role. So, substantively, where the electoral process is concerned, it is mapped to the custodial role. Substantively, this role now is played by the Senators. So, the possibility for the Senatorial role to be politicised, given that is where the electoral process will now sit, stands. That has not changed.

The issue of the consultative process and rushing to referendum. To have a referendum, you would need to debate in the House a Motion and a whole bunch of Government processes. To go forward, you have to have that agreement, it is not just something that you put out.

But if I could take the process a little bit further, if I could address the issue of why we did not ask the Constitutional Commission, again it is a false argument. The problem was set before the Constitutional Commission as laid out by the Prime Minister in his original speech and in his direction to the Commission. It is the Government that constituted the Constitutional Commission and said, "How do we address these series of issues?" It is not that we have bypassed them or ignored them. They took in information from a wide variety of sources, a wide variety of people, a wide variety of ideas. They synthesised down a series of possible recommendations.

They are not the final arbiter on which of those recommendations should go forward. This House is the final arbiter of which of those recommendations should go forward and it is the Government's duty to take those recommendations and put them together in a Motion that should stand before the House. We have followed that process through over the course of this year. There is no abrogation of responsibility, there is no short-cut, nothing has been hidden. And, in contrast, that is what I am saying the WP has been doing.

I think we have batted the points back and forth. I am not sure we will come to a complete meeting of minds but I hope my position is clear. If I can understand your position, you are supporting very much a symbolic Presidency with a devolution of all the custodial powers and, hence, the electoral process to a Senate, the eligibility criteria of which would be an approximate to the eligibility criteria of our current President and there will be an exclusionary process at 16, where you feel that somehow this is better than our current system. I, fundamentally, disagree and that is the separation between us.