Voting rights in Singapore

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.

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.

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.

[4] 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.

[5] 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.

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."

[24] 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".

[25] 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.

[28] 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".

Hence:[28] The people of Singapore have thus had little experience of general elections nor can it be safely assumed that they have grown up to cherish as an inalienable right, the right to be governed by a government of their own choice, expressed in periodic and general elections by universal and equal suffrage and held by secret vote ... [W]e do not consider it safe to assume that a significant proportion of the people of Singapore will be able to realise, until it is too late to prevent it, that any inroads have been made into the democratic system of general elections by a future government intent on undermining first and ultimately destroying the practice of democracy in Singapore.However, Parliament decided not to entrench the right to vote, instead relegating voting rights to statutory regulation under the Parliamentary Elections Act.

[22] 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.

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.

[31] Otherwise, with control over a simple majority of Parliament,[32] 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).

[33] 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:[34] ... 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.

[37] Sections 9A(3)(c) and (d) identify ministerial speeches made at the second readings of bills or "any relevant material in any official record of debates in Parliament" as appropriate aspects of the interpretive matrix.

In Hinds v. The Queen (1975),[39] the Privy Council said that:[40] ... a great deal can be, and in drafting practice often is, left to necessary implication from the adoption in the new constitution of a governmental structure which makes provision for a legislature, an executive and judicature.

It is taken for granted that the basic principle of separation of powers will apply to the exercise of their respective functions by these three organs of government.The court in Hinds held that, as "a rule of construction applicable to constitutional instruments" adopting the Westminster system, the "absence of express words" did not prevent the judicial powers of the new state being exclusively exercised by the judicature".

[41] Thio has also argued that the courts may find that an implied right to vote can be derived from the existing structure of the Constitution and a purposive reading of Articles 65 and 66.

This will make for a more viable system and a more stable society.Lee suggested that such a change should perhaps be implemented "in 15 to 20 years" if Singapore's birth rate had not increased, as policies might then be disproportionately influenced by people aged 60 and over.

[54] Speaking during the Second Reading of the bill that led to the change in the law, the Minister for Home Affairs, Wong Kan Seng, said that the Government recognized that increasing numbers of Singaporeans studied and worked abroad due to economic globalization.

[55] At that time, the law generally required overseas voters to have resided in Singapore for an aggregate of two years during the five-year period before the prescribed date.

"[63] A person is disqualified from voting in the following situations, which include engaging in acts incompatible with being a Singapore citizen, being of unsound mind, or being in prison for committing a criminal offence: Another potentially controversial provision is section 6(1)(b) of the Parliamentary Elections Act, which denies suffrage to convicted criminals serving jail sentences.

The issue of the constitutionality of this restriction has not yet arisen in any Singapore court, but during a Parliamentary debate in May 2001, Non-constituency Member of Parliament J.B. Jeyaretnam challenged the provision as unconstitutional.

In Malaysia, the right to vote is entrenched in Article 119 of the Federal Constitution, but suffrage is similarly denied to those serving prison terms.

2) (2005),[80] a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, found that 18 states allowed prisoners to vote without restriction (Albania, Azerbaijan, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine), while in 13 states all prisoners were not allowed to vote (Armenia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Ireland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey and the United Kingdom).

In another 13 states, the right to vote could be restricted in some way (Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Latvia and Liechtenstein).

The Supreme Court of the United States held in Richardson v. Ramirez (1974)[86] that a California statute permanently removing the right to vote from any person convicted of an "infamous crime" unless the right to vote was restored by court order or executive pardon did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Thus, it was unnecessary for the statute in question to be narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests to be consistent with equal protection.