Tan Cheng Bock v AG (a) [2017] SGCA 50 First, the Judge was wrong to hold that the definition of “President” in Art 2 refers both to Presidents elected by Parliament and Presidents elected by the citizens. Rather, the definition refers only to the latter category. It would follow from this that under Art 164, Parliament could only specify the term of office of a President who had been elected by the citizens. (b) Second, the Judge erred in finding that Parliament’s intention was specifically to permit the subsequent specification of President Wee’s last term as the first term. Instead, Parliament’s intention which emerges from the relevant extraneous material was to limit itself to specifying a term of office of a President elected by the citizens as the first term. (c) Third, Parliament’s specification of President Wee’s term as the first term was based on the misapprehension that President Wee was a President elected by the citizens. The Judge was wrong to have held otherwise. 32 Broadly speaking, the Respondent’s responses to these arguments were as follows: (a) First, as a matter of textual interpretation, Art 164 confers unlimited power on Parliament to specify the first term. On its face, it does not restrict Parliament to specifying the term of office of a popularly-elected President as the first term. Further, Art 19B does not impose any relevant constraints on Art 164. In particular, it is significant that Art 19B speaks of an election being reserved if no person from a racial community has “held the office of President”. This focuses on 15