The jurisdiction of the election judge to hear election petition is a creature of statute and judges are especially bound to keep themselves strictly within the letter of the Acts, and to abstain from any attempt to strain the law. For this reason the statutory requirements of election law must be strictly observed. 21 Indeed, this is only one of the latest cases which emphasises the points embodied in the above-mentioned quotation, and whose genesis goes back much further (see, for example, per Raja Azlan Shah J (as His Excellency then was) in Tengku Korish v Mohamed bin Jusoh [1970] 1 MLJ 6). 22 In the Indian Supreme Court decision of Jyoti Basu v Debi Ghosal AIR 1982 SC 983, Chinnappa Reddy J observed (in a similar vein) thus (at [8]): A right to elect, fundamental though it is to democracy, is, anomalously enough, neither a fundamental right nor a Common Law Right. It is pure and simple, a statutory right. So is the right to be elected. So is the right to dispute an election. Outside of statute, there is no right to elect, no right to be elected and no right to dispute an election. Statutory creations they are, and therefore, subject to statutory limitation. An election petition is not an action at Common Law, nor in equity. It is a statutory proceeding to which neither the common law nor the principles of equity apply but only those rules which the statute makes and applies. It is a special jurisdiction, and a special jurisdiction has always to be exercised in accordance with the statute creating it. Concepts familiar to Common Law and Equity must remain strangers to Election Law unless statutorily embodied. A Court has no right to resort to them on considerations of alleged policy because policy in such matters, as those, relating to the trial of election disputes, is what the statute lays down. In the trial of election disputes, Court is put in a straight jacket. [emphasis added] 23 The general approach that ought to be adopted in election proceedings as embodied in the above quotations is, indeed, firmly etched in the legal landscape, and I will bear it in mind for the purpose of the present proceedings. Precedent 24 Not surprisingly, perhaps, Mr Chan’s focus in this particular regard was on the relevant Malaysian decisions – not least because virtually every relevant decision from this jurisdiction supported (either to a greater or lesser extent) his case. He was, in fact, at pains to point out from the outset of arguments that the relevant Malaysian elections laws not only had the same paternity as, but were also almost identical to, the relevant Singapore election laws. In the circumstances, so he argued, Malaysian decisions were persuasive and ought to be followed. 25 The central precedent relied upon by Mr Chan was the Malaysian High Court decision of Chong Thain Vun v Watson [1968] 1 MLJ 65(“the Chong Thain Vun case”), where Lee Hun Hoe J (as he then was) held, in no uncertain terms, that a failure to comply with the Malaysian equivalent of our r 13 would result in the dismissal of an application to declare an election void as this rule was a mandatory one. In that case, motions had been taken out by the respondents to set aside three election petitions. One common ground relied upon by the respondents vis-à-vis all three petitions was that the notice of the filing of the petitions had not been served on them within the timeframe stipulated by the equivalent of r 16 of our PER. Another common ground relied upon by the respondents vis-à-vis two of the petitions was that the petitioner in each case had failed to comply with the equivalent of r 13 of our PER. This is of course the holding which Mr Chan was primarily concerned with. In so far as the former ground was concerned, Lee J, following the Malaysian Privy Council decision of Devan Nair v Yong Kuan Teik [1967] 1 MLJ 261; [1967] 2 AC 31 (“the Devan Nair