Wong Souk Yee v AG [2019] SGCA 25 election in a GRC so long as not all the seats in the GRC have been vacated, for it states: (2A) In respect of any group representation constituency, no writ shall be issued under subsection (1) for an election to fill any vacancy unless all the Members for that constituency have vacated their seats in Parliament. 45 As to this, the Appellant contends that Parliament cannot alter the effect and intent of Art 49(1) by enacting ordinary legislation. She submits that if Parliament desired to prevent a by-election from being called in a GRC unless all the Members in that GRC had vacated their seats, it was incumbent on Parliament to have amended Art 49(1) instead to provide for this. 46 Implicit in this argument is the premise that the absence in the Constitution of any provision to the effect of s 24(2A) of the PEA must have been due to a legislative oversight: the Appellant accepts that Parliament intended that a by-election would only be called in a GRC if all the Members of the GRC had vacated their seats (as reflected in s 24(2A) of the PEA), but contends that the court must approach this matter on the footing that Parliament omitted to include a provision in the Constitution to achieve this intended result. At the hearing before us, both parties in fact confirmed that their common position was that there was indeed such a legislative oversight in the implementation of the GRC scheme. This in itself strongly militates against a finding that the ordinary meaning of Art 49(1) is “clear”. If the amendments made to the Constitution in 1988 to put in place the GRC scheme were insufficient to achieve their intended outcome, then it is all the more likely that the relevant provisions of the Constitution, when read together, would appear ambiguous or unclear. 18

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