page_title: Voting rights in Singapore
section_title: 2009 parliamentary debate
hierarchical_section_title: Voting rights in Singapore / Proposals to express the right in the Constitution / 2009 parliamentary debate
caption_attribution_description: English: Title page of the 1999 Reprint of the Constitution of Singapore.
context_page_description: The right to vote in Singapore is not explicitly stated in Singapore's Constitution, but the Government has expressed the view that it may be inferred from the fact that Singapore is a representative democracy and from specific constitutional provisions, including Articles 65 and 66 which set out requirements for the prorogation and dissolution of Parliament and the holding of general elections. Speaking on the matter in Parliament in 2009, the Minister for Law, K. Shanmugam, said that the right to vote could not be a mere privilege as this would imply the existence of an institution superior to the body of citizens that is empowered to grant such a privilege, but that no such institution exists in a free country. In 1966 a Constitutional Commission chaired by Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin advocated entrenching the right to vote within the Constitution, but this was not taken up by the Parliament of the day. When this proposal was repeated during the 2009 parliamentary debate, the Government took the view that such entrenchment was unnecessary.
  In Taw Cheng Kong v. Public Prosecutor, the High Court suggested on an obiter basis that voting is a privilege rather than a right.
context_section_description: During the 2009 parliamentary debate on the right to vote's status, Thio Li-ann proposed that, to avoid doubt, the right should be specifically set out in the Constitution. She argued that entrenching the right to vote through an Article in the Constitution would provide the opportunity to protect the details of the right. Currently, voting is regulated by the PEA. As it is an ordinary statute, it can be altered with a simple parliamentary majority by future governments seeking to amend or restrict voting rights. Thio said that expressing the right to vote clearly in the Constitution would allow aspects of that right such as voter secrecy and the universality and equality of votes to be protected from unjust manipulation.
  However, the Minister for Law said the Government was of the opinion that as the right to vote is an implied right in the Constitution, it was unnecessary for the Constitution to be amended to expressly mention the right. Articles 65 and 66 of the Constitution would be entrenched once Article 5(2A) is brought into force. That Article, which has remained in abeyance since it was introduced in 1991, provides that a bill that seeks to amend, among other things, Article 65 or 66, must be supported at a national referendum by not less than two-thirds of the votes cast, unless the President consents to the amendment. Shanmugam went on to state that the concerns of the 1966 Constitutional Commission were now moot, as Singapore had since experienced ten general elections with a 95% voter turnout each time. Therefore, it could be assumed that the idea and experience of voting were deeply ingrained in Singaporean voters. Furthermore, some countries choose to draft their constitutions in great detail while others, like Singapore, set out a basic philosophy. He noted that countries such as North Korea and Myanmar were among those that had set out the right to vote within their constitutions. Shanmugam concluded that what was fundamental to protecting the right to vote was a Government committed to the rule of law.
  Following the parliamentary debate, in a 2009 article Thio elaborated that entrenching the right to vote in the Constitution would make it significantly more difficult for any corrupt government that came into power to curtail it, as a super-majority of at least two-thirds of all elected Members of Parliament would be needed before a constitutional amendment could be made. Otherwise, with control over a simple majority of Parliament, a ruling party, if it chose to, could direct amendments to the PEA or create new legislation to provide some citizens with, say, double the number of votes and protect this from constitutional challenge using a notwithstanding clause (that is, a provision stated to have legal effect despite the existence of other inconsistent laws). By not protecting such an important right, the freedom of Singapore's electoral system could be progressively curtailed. A similar point has been made by Singapore Management University constitutional law professor Jack Lee who noted that since Article 66 does not define the term general election:
  ... there does not appear to be anything in the Constitution to prevent a future government from, say, requiring all candidates to have their "suitability" for political office determined by a government-appointed committee meeting in private, the decision of which would be final. There could still be a "general election" of sorts, but clearly a greatly-impoverished version.
  Thio also argued that without a constitutionally expressed right to vote, the judiciary is handicapped in interpreting this implied right, given its conservative approach to reading the Constitution and the fact that it is unlikely to appeal to normative ideas such as representative democracy.
caption: A copy of the 1999 Reprint of the Constitution of Singapore
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