page_title: Representative democracy in Singapore
section_title: Before World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Representative democracy in Singapore / History / Before World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: The royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom on a pediment of the National Museum of Singapore.
context_page_description: Singapore has a multi-party parliamentary system of representative democracy in which the President of Singapore is the head of state and the Prime Minister of Singapore is the head of government. Executive power is vested in the President and the Cabinet. Cabinet has the general direction and control of the government and is collectively responsible to the Parliament. There are three separate branches of government: the legislature, executive and judiciary.
  Representative democracy began in the 1940s when the number of elected seats in the legislature gradually increased, until a fully elected Legislative Assembly of Singapore was established in 1958. At present, Singapore legislation establishes various mechanisms that fulfil the doctrine of representative democracy. Parliamentary elections in Singapore are required to be held regularly to elect the Parliament through universal suffrage. Although the right to vote in Singapore law is not expressly mentioned in the Constitution, the Government has affirmed that the right may be implied into the constitutional text.
  The Constitution vests the three branches of the state with different aspects of governmental power.
context_section_description: After Singapore was founded in 1819, she was under the jurisdiction of British rule. For a long time, representative democracy was non-existent. In 1920, a select committee which was established to reform the Legislative Council argued that Singapore was not ready for democratic ideas – to allow people to elect members into the Legislative Council might result in giving the "professional politician the opportunity of obtaining power by playing on religious and social prejudices". Even though the Council lacked popular representation of the locals, the population was generally satisfied with the system and the policies of the Governor of the Straits Settlements were influenced by opinions expressed by the public and in the press.
caption: The royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom on a pediment of the National Museum of Singapore. Singapore was subject to British rule between 1819 and 1963, and did not begin having elected members in its legislature until 1948.
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