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Tan Cheng Bock v AG [2017] SGCA 50 communities to which the persons holding the terms of office belonged. This cuts against, and must displace, the provisional and presumptive position arrived at above (see [59] above) that the first term should be one after the appointed date. Art 164 clearly contemplates that Parliament may choose a term of office that commenced either before or after 1 April 2017 as the first term. If it chooses a term of office after the appointed date, nothing further needs to be done. However, if it chooses a term of office before the appointed date, then under Art 164(1)(b), in relation to any of the terms that are counted before the appointed date, the communities to which the persons “who held those terms of office” [emphasis added] belong must also be specified. In the face of such clear and specific provisions, we can only conclude that the presumptive position earlier discussed cannot stand – it must be possible for Parliament to designate terms of the office of the President which were held before the appointed date, or else Art 164(1)(b) would be senseless and unnecessary. 66 That does not mean that Art 19B operates retrospectively in the strict sense. There is a distinction between legislating to alter or affect matters in the past and legislating to provide for the future consequences of past events: see Craies on Legislation (Daniel Greenberg gen ed) (Sweet & Maxwell, 10th Ed, 2012) at paras 10.3.5–10.3.6. The former is clearly retrospective legislation. The scheme provided for under Arts 19B and 164 comes under the latter category. This is an instance of legislation allowing future action to be potentially influenced by past events. 67 In this light, we are driven to reconsider another aspect of the presumptive position that we preliminarily arrived at, namely that the expression “office of President” when used on each of the three occasions in Art 19B(1) means the same thing, which is the office of President under the Constitution as it stands today after the 2016 Amendment. 36

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Tan Chen Bock v. Attorney General

Judgment

Question Presented: Whether the reserved election clause solely permits choosing from the terms of office of Presidents elected by the citizens, or also includes those chosen by Parliament.

Alleged Acts: The case comes before the court on Art. 19B(1) and 164. Art. 19B(1) introducing a reserved election where the office of the President is reserved for candidates of a particular community if no person from that particular community has held office for the five most recent terms of office. The law defined community as Chinese, Malay, Indian, and other minority communities. Three individuals held the office for five terms and were not Malay. Therefore, the 2017 election was reserved for a candidate from that community. The appellant argues that this does not apply to those candidates elected by Parliament, but only to those elected by the people, which would not reserve the office for a Malay candidate.

Procedural history: The appellant filed suit in the High Court seeking voidance of Art. 19 and 164. The High Court dismissed the application on July 7, 2017. The appellant appealed to the current court and the Court heard the case on expedited basis because the Government sought to issue a writ of election for the next presidential election. The appellant appealed the case stating that lower court erroneously stated that “President” applies to those both elected by the people and Parliament, that the last term of President Wee was set as the first term in the five, and that President Wee was elected by the citizens.

Summary: The court determined that the appellant’s argument was one based primarily on the text of the constitution. The Constitution defines a President as one elected under the Constitution, not necessarily those elected under 2016 Amendments. The appellant argued that only Presidents that underwent the prior reform process may not be counted or considered Presidents. However, the court rejected this because the legislative intent was not to preclude any of the previous Presidents under this and create an unworkable standard. Parliament has the authority to determine what “five more recent terms” means under the Constitution.

Conclusion: Parliament had the power to specify that President Wee’s last term was the first term in the five term count. The court dismissed the appeal.

Legal Issue(s)

Candidate Registration

Region: Asia-Pacific

Country: Singapore

Language of Decision

English

Court: Appellate Court

Election Type: Presidential

Date of decision: Aug 23, 2017

Geolocation

Latitude: 1.289765826

Longitude: 103.8511735

: Geolocation

Primary Documents

tan-cheng-bock-v-attorney-general-2017-sgca-50-(amended-on-131017)-pdf.pdf
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Election Judgments - IFES

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Tan Chen Bock v. Attorney General

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