Wong Souk Yee v AG
[2019] SGCA 25
make provision” for, among other things, any constituency to be
declared and then contested as a GRC. On this view, Art 49(1) would
not have any application to GRCs at all.
(c)
Third, Parliament intended that Art 49(1) would apply to GRCs,
but was satisfied that the phrase “in the manner provided by or under
any law relating to Parliamentary elections” would sufficiently
incorporate the reference to s 24(2A) of the PEA so as to qualify the
operation of Art 49(1) in this context.
55
Having considered the extraneous material, we could not discern with
any degree of certainty which of these three possibilities was clearly to be
preferred; and the Deputy Attorney-General, who appeared for the Respondent,
also conceded before us that there was nothing in the relevant parliamentary
debates that would shed light on this.
56
There is an important distinction between the first possibility and the
second and third possibilities set out at [54] above. The first possibility suggests
that Parliament intended to amend the Constitution but inadvertently omitted to
do so; whereas the other two possibilities suggest that Parliament did not intend
to amend Art 49(1) because it considered that the language of that provision, or,
alternatively, that of Art 39A, was sufficient to achieve its intended outcome by
incorporating the necessary reference to the explicit language in s 24(2A) of the
PEA. Flowing from this distinction are two points that have a significant bearing
on the question of how we should give effect to Parliament’s intention in the
light of the available extraneous material. First, if there is a reasonable
possibility that Parliament did not intend to amend a particular statutory
provision to put an intended outcome into practice, this raises the question of
whether it is permissible for us to read in such an amendment. It was suggested
23