SINGAPORE — Proposing a “hiatus-triggered” model where presidential elections will be reserved for a particular minority race which has not been represented in the office for five consecutive terms, the Constitutional Commission also allayed concerns of tokenism: The eligibility criteria for presidential candidates must not be lowered under any circumstances in order to accommodate candidate from any given racial group, it said in its report released on Wednesday (Sept 7). 

In fact, such a mechanism will “likely encourage candidates from that group to step forward and contest the next election”, the commission added. Crucially, the arrangement has a “natural sunset” — if free and unregulated elections produce presidents from a varied distribution of ethnicities, the requirement of a reserved election will never be triggered. 

Spelling out the details of its proposal, the commission said that if no suitable candidate steps forward from the particular racial group which a presidential election was reserved for, it would then be opened to candidates of all races. The reserved election would then be deferred to the next presidential election and the practice will continue until a candidate from that racial group is elected into office.

Five full terms translate to 30 years. There might be situations when more than one racial group is eligible for a reserved election and the Government will have to decide which race gets priority, the report said. 

“This is a situation which should be recognised and catered for by prioritising among the groups that have not been represented in the Presidency,” it added. “A possible solution would be to reserve the election in question by prioritising the racial group with the longer hiatus.”

In proposing this “hiatus-triggered” model, the commission considered it to be the best mechanism of all those that it had examined, with the lowest degree of intrusiveness.

It is simple, and enables the representation of all racial groups in a “meaningful”  way, and is race-neutral as it does not single out any one ethnic group for protection.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, in a televised interview with Mediacorp on Sunday, had also spoken about this mechanism  as a means of ensuring that a minority president is elected from time to time.

In its report, the commission also addressed objections to having a mechanism to safeguard minority representation, such as the concern that a President who enters office through a reserved election might be viewed as lacking legitimacy.

It said: “... Perceptions of tokenism may persist to varying degrees, regardless of how the electoral system is structured and it is ultimately for the candidate, upon taking office, to conduct himself with the dignity and gravitas which befits the presidency and thereby earn the respect of the electorate.”

There was also a concern that Singapore may fall afoul of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which it signed in October 2015 and will ratify in 2017.

Specifically, that safeguarding minority representation may go against Article 5 of ICERD, where state parties undertake to guarantee political rights of persons without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin.

In addressing this concern, the commission noted that the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the European Court of Human Rights had made findings that the Presidential Office system in Bosnia and Herzegovina had confined representation to three majority ethnic groups, excluding others.

The commission stressed that the Bosnia framework applies in every election, while the hiatus-triggered model it has proposed for Singapore is not meant to be a permanent arrangement.

It is also not meant to be exclusionary, in that the mechanism is not meant, in spirit, to prevent the participation of any minority. Therefore, the model would not fall afoul of the ICERD, the commission concluded.

TIMELINE OF SINGAPORE'S PRESIDENTIAL SYSTEM