SINGAPORE: The Workers’ Party’s (WP) proposal of having a Senate to absorb the custodial roles of a President was the subject of heated exchange in Parliament on Tuesday (8 Nov).
Several Members of Parliament tried to seek clarity about how such a Senate would work and how its members would be selected.
WP chairman Sylvia Lim had outlined her party’s position on the second day of parliamentary debate on the Elected Presidency, proposing an eight-member Senate that would be elected, and act as a second chamber or Upper House in the legislature.
A position paper published by the WP said it would be up to a Senate Elections Committee to select 16 most suitable candidates, who are non-partisan and who would have to meet qualifying criteria before they run in a national election.
UNCLEAR HOW SENATE WOULD BE SELECTED
Law Minister K Shanmugam tried to press the WP for details on this qualifying criteria, sparking a vigorous back-and-forth with MP Dennis Tan and Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Leon Perera.
Would candidates for the Senate have to have run companies of the size currently set out in the qualifying criteria for the Elected Presidency, he asked Mr Perera.
Said Mr Shanmugam: “I’m not talking about qualities, I’m talking about criteria. Criteria leads to qualities. Can you answer that point? Today, there is a set of objective criteria … Would you require the same criteria for the senators, so they can exercise and presume to have similar qualities?”
In response, Mr Perera said the criteria would be “similar”, but was interrupted by Mr Shanmugam, who said: “I’ve heard the word similar several times. To what extent would it be different?”
“In all senses, what you are proposing for the senate is like what is being proposed for the elected presidency, a set of objective criteria that is the same, and some deliberative process.”
MP Janil Puthucheary raised questions about how the Senate Elections Committee would determine the 16 suitable candidates that would then be put forward for public election as well.
He noted that a key point of the role of the committee is to prevent more than 16 people standing forward for public election to the Senate. “So the 17th and downstream would have to be prevented from being exposed to public vote … On what grounds does the committee decide that the 16th person is good enough, and the 17th person is not good enough for the public to make up their mind?”
WP MP Pritam Singh conceded that Dr Puthucheary had raised a fair question, and explained that the committee has to “draw a line” before the process becomes “unwieldy.”
“It has to determine for the 16 individuals that it has decided upon, who are the ones who are best qualified for the job,” he said. “Then when it goes to the polls, the citizens of Singapore will whittle that list down further to a number of eight, basically.”
Stepping into the exchange, WP Secretary-General Low Thia Khiang called on the House to “focus on the fundamentals” and “not be bogged down by details.”
“The WP has put forth an alternative to the system,” he said. “It is by no means perfect, but the idea is to look at the fundamental difference.”
“Let’s focus on what the fundamentals are, and whether the idea sounds logical and whether it’s a better system. We can work out the details and finetune it in time to come.”
SENATE COULD CREATE GRIDLOCK
Education Minister (Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung pointed out that the WP’s suggestion could result in a deadlock between the Government and the Senate.
“So just in case the elected Government abuses the reserves or appoints friends or relatives to hold key positions in the Government, we have an Elected President together with his advisory council to exercise this ‘check and balance’ on the Government,” he said.
In response, Mr Low explained that the Senate system the WP proposed is “not much different” from the Elected Presidency that Singapore has today. “Unlike the Senate in the Western world where they look into Bills passed in Parliament, our suggestion is that the Senate replace the Elected President,” he said. “Logically, there will not be any kind of stalemate.”
This drew a rebuttal from Mr Ong, who said: “If the two concepts are the same, don’t throw away the old pair of shoes. I think the old pair of shoes would be more comfortable, and we can keep improving on it.”
Mr Low countered by saying that there was a “big difference” between the two concepts. The Elected President’s decision is made by just one person, at the advice of an unelected Council of Presidential Advisers, while the WP wants the powers of the President to be vested in a democratically elected Senate, he argued.
“UNNECESSARY POLITICISATION”
MPs Edwin Tong and Dr Puthucheary said the WP’s proposal will unnecessarily politicise issues.
According to Mr Tong, a referendum on the Presidency, which the WP suggests, as well as a contest to elect the eight Senators would “create a political contest that would be polarising, divisive, time-consuming, and energy-sapping”.
Meanwhile, Dr Puthucheary noted that because WP’s proposal entails putting up a slate of 16 candidates, it “opens up a can of worms in terms of the opportunity for politicisation amongst those 16 candidates”.
Hitting back, WP’s Mr Perera called the issue of politicisation a red herring. He explained that subjecting the office of the President to an election “runs the risk that that election will inevitably become a proxy General Election, will become politicised”, like in the 2011 Presidential Election.
Nominated MP Chia Yong Yong also weighed in on the issue, asking Mr Singh about the measures he proposed to ensure that the election of the senate would not be politicised.
In response, Mr Singh said that in the process of an election, there is some degree of politicisation. “The same applies for the EP,” he said.
“So the question is, do we want to preserve the symbolic and unifying role of the President? Or, by doing that, have an elected Senate, which will of course have to persuade the public. Look, these are my credentials, I’m Singaporean and I seek to play my role as part of a legislative member.”
So while there will be some degree of politicisation and I do concede it. I think it’s a better situation than having the Presidency in itself be politicised.”
“RADICAL” PROPOSAL AT THE LAST MINUTE?
Rejecting the referendum proposal, Dr Puthucheary warned of the danger of reducing complex proposals to a binary “Yes/No” vote and chided the WP for playing politics with the issue.
“This is not a small change, it is an extraordinary radical proposal, it is an entire major overhaul of the presidential system, our political system and yet they are accusing the PAP Government of rushing this through,” he stressed.
“In between a proposal or a discussion, we have an extended period of public scrutiny and public discussion, which is exactly what we have done … we have not rushed this,” he said.
Dr Puthucheary chided the WP for its proposal at the “last-minute”, a day before the House would vote on the amendment Bill on changes to the EP.
“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,” he charged.
“The details have not been worked out. Fundamental details on whether this will in any way, address your concerns, have not been worked out. And what you’re asking to do is to immediately go out and out it to a referendum. How can that be seen as responsible politics?”
