Tan Cheng Bock v AG
[2017] SGCA 50
President of a particular community, then Parliament could lawfully only
specify the term of office of a President elected by the citizens as the first term.
As we pointed out to Mr Rajah, if we agreed with that interpretation,
Parliament’s choice would have been unconstitutional. It would not have
mattered what the AG’s advice was in such circumstances, given that President
Wee was not (on this assumption) in fact elected to the office by the citizens.
132
However, because we have disagreed with the Appellant’s interpretation
of Art 19B(1), the issue of the AG’s advice is moot. Whatever that advice might
have said, it has no bearing on our decision, which is that Art 164 empowers
Parliament to specify the last term of President Wee as the first term.
133
In any event, it is appropriate for us to return to what we have said at
[120] above and state explicitly that there is nothing to suggest that there was
any misapprehension on the part either of PM Lee or the MPs that President
Wee was an Elected President in the sense of his having been elected by the
citizens. He was not. However, President Wee was the first President to hold
the office with the enhanced powers of an Elected President. And it was in that
explicit context that PM Lee referred to President Wee’s term, perhaps as a
matter of convenience, but in no way erroneously, as one of the five terms of
the Elected Presidency. And if there is no reason to think that PM Lee or the
MPs were mistaken, the predicate for the Appellant’s argument – that a mistake
was made – falls away.
134
In our judgment, consideration of the extraneous material in this case
confirms the purposively-ascertained ordinary meaning of Arts 19B(1) and 164.
It follows that Parliament could, under Art 164, lawfully specify President
Wee’s last term as the first term.
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