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 (1998), the High Court suggested on an obiter basis that voting is a privilege rather than a right. It has been suggested by law academic Thio Li-ann that, if called upon to decide the issue, the court might infer the existence of the right to vote in the Constitution from its text and structure, and from the fact that it is an adaptation of the Westminster system of democracy. If the right to vote were to be found to be implicit in the Constitution, the judiciary would be better able to protect the right when issues arise before the courts.
The Parliamentary Elections Act and Presidential Elections Act regulate the exercise of the vote and set out the procedures for parliamentary and presidential elections in Singapore. These are ordinary statutes which can be changed by a simple majority in Parliament. All Singapore citizens not less than 21 years old on the cut-off date for the registration of electors (1 January of a particular year), and ordinarily resident in the country, are entitled to vote in both parliamentary and presidential elections. A one person, one vote system is currently in operation, though in 1994 Senior Minister and former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew suggested that people aged between 35 and 60 who were married with children should be given two votes each due to their greater responsibilities and contributions to society. Overseas voting was introduced in 2001, and first carried out during the 2006 general election.
A person is disqualified from voting in certain circumstances, which include engaging in acts incompatible with being a Singapore citizen, being of unsound mind, or being in prison for committing a criminal offence. The constitutionality of the statutory provisions denying prisoners the right to vote has not yet become an issue in Singapore, though it has been controversial in some foreign jurisdictions.
Introduction
The right to vote forms the foundation of representative democracy, that is, democracy based on the principle of citizens electing a group of people to represent their interests. The various models of government that fall under the general term "representative democracy", namely, the protective, participatory and elite models, are all based upon the underlying principle of equality of rights, including the right to vote..
"Popular government" was referred to by John Stuart Mill as "where the supreme controlling power ... is vested in the entire aggregate of the community",. while Edmund Burke argued that it has the desirable consequence of establishing a government that has a unified public interest, with its citizens absent of personal prejudices except for that of the public good.; also published in . The right to vote then provides the means for individuals to voice their support of or opposition to government. Their aggregated choices enable the will of the people to control the extent of power and perpetuity of governments, thus protecting society's rights and interests.; also published in .
Thomas Paine, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, said that the right to vote is critical in the protection of individual freedoms. He called it one of an individual's personal rights, which are "a species of property of the most sacred kind", and expressed the view that "[t]o take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, ... subject to the will of another ... [T]o disfranchise any class of men is as criminal as the proposal to take away property".Paine, pp. 334 and 336. Paine's view was that there is no justification for one part of a community to deny another its right to vote on any basis, whether class, race, religion or political creed. His view survives in various international instruments such as Article 21(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.Art. 21(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, General Assembly Resolution 217A(III), U.N. G.A.O.R., 3d Sess., Supp. No. 13. U.N. Doc. A/180 (1948), p. 71, declares: "Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives".
In the United States Supreme Court case Reynolds v. Sims (1964),Reynolds v. Sims , Supreme Court (US). Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote:Reynolds, pp. 555 and 561–562.
The term representative democracy does not appear in the Constitution of Singapore.. However, an analogy may be drawn from the approach taken by the High Court of Australia to the Australian Constitution. In Lange v. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1997),. the Court inferred that the Constitution embodies a system of representative and responsible government from various provisions, including those requiring periodic elections to choose the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives.Lange, pp. 557–559. Similarly, the Singapore Constitution prescribes that Parliament may be dissolved by the Prime Minister under certain conditions,Constitution, Arts. 65(2)–(3A). and will be automatically dissolved by operation of law five years from its first sitting.Constitution, Art. 65(4). A general election must be held within three months after each dissolution of Parliament.Constitution, Art. 66. The Constitution also states that "[t]he President shall be elected by the citizens of Singapore in accordance with any law made by the Legislature",Constitution, Art. 17(2). and requires a poll for the election to be held not more than three months before the incumbent's term of office expires, or, if the office is vacated before the expiry date, within six months of the date when it becomes vacant.Constitution, Art. 17(3). In addition, in the Proclamation of Singapore contained in the Independence of Singapore Agreement,. The Agreement appears in the Revised Edition of the Statutes of the Republic of Singapore in a section entitled "Constitutional Documents". which was entered into by the Governments of Malaysia and Singapore to effect Singapore's separation from Malaysia, the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew proclaimed on behalf of the people and the Government that as from 9 August 1965 "Singapore shall be forever a sovereign democratic and independent nation ...".
Status of the right Judicial view In Taw Cheng Kong v. Public Prosecutor (1998),Taw Cheng Kong v. Public Prosecutor 1 S.L.R.(R.) [Singapore Law Reports (Reissue)] 78, High Court (Singapore). the High Court expressed the obiter view that the right to vote does not have constitutional status but is a privilege:Taw Cheng Kong, p. 102, para. 56 (emphasis added).
Government's view The juridical status of the right to vote was subsequently debated in Parliament on 16 May 2001 upon an adjournment motion introduced by Non-constituency Member of Parliament Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam. Jeyaretnam argued that since "the marking of a ballot paper is an expression of the voter", the right to vote is protected by the freedom of expression clause set out in Article 14 of the Constitution of Singapore.. Responding, the Minister for Home Affairs, Wong Kan Seng, stated:.
The heading of section 38 of the Parliamentary Elections Act ("PEA"). is "Registers of electors to be conclusive evidence of right to vote". Subsection (1) provides that the current register of electors is conclusive evidence for determining whether a person is entitled to vote at an election, and subsection (2) states that a person's "right and duty of voting" is not prejudiced if there is an appeal pending as to whether his or her name is properly on the register.
The status of the right to vote was again considered in Parliament in 2009. During debates on the Ministry of Law's annual budget on 12 February, Nominated Member of Parliament Thio Li-ann asked if the right to vote is "a constitutional right and part of the fundamental law of the land, or merely a statutory right, regulated by ordinary law?". Replying to Thio the following day, Minister for Law K. Shanmugam referred to the 2001 debate on the matter and confirmed that, having conferred with the Attorney-General, in the Government's view the right to vote is an implied constitutional right arising from various provisions of the Constitution, including Articles 65 and 66.. Article 65 sets out the requirements for the prorogation and dissolution of Parliament. Articles 65(2) to 65(3A) explain when the Prime Minister may dissolve Parliament, while Article 65(4) specifically provides that Parliament has a fixed term: "Parliament, unless sooner dissolved, shall continue for 5 years from the date of its first sitting and shall then stand dissolved." Article 66 states: "There shall be a general election at such time, within 3 months after every dissolution of Parliament, as the President shall, by Proclamation in the Gazette, appoint." The Minister also said:
As regards the High Court's view in Taw Cheng Kong, the Minister noted that it could not be treated as a precedent since "[t]he legal nature of the citizens' right to vote was not an issue in that case and was not specifically argued". Thio Li-ann has commented that the Minister's clarification "dealt the quietus est to the High Court's odd pronouncement in Taw Cheng Kong v. Public Prosecutor".. Quietus est means "he is discharged": .
Proposals to express the right in the Constitution 1966 Constitutional Commission On 18 January 1966, shortly after Singapore's independence, the President appointed a Constitutional Commission led by Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin to consider how the rights of racial, linguistic, and religious minorities in the nascent nation should be protected.. In its report on 27 August 1966,, reproduced in . the Commission recommended entrenching the right to vote as a "fundamental right" in the form of "the right to elect a government of their choice as expressed in general elections held at reasonable periodic intervals by secret vote".Report of the Constitutional Commission, 1966, para. 43. The chief justification for this proposal was the relatively infant or immature culture of democracy in a newly independent nation that was "barely one year old".Thio, "Westminster Constitutions and Implied Fundamental Rights", p. 410. The report noted that citizens had only exercised the right to vote twice in general elections, in 1959 and 1963 respectively. Hence:
However, Parliament decided not to entrench the right to vote, instead relegating voting rights to statutory regulation under the Parliamentary Elections Act.
2009 parliamentary debate