Is Singapore's Elected Presidency too broken to be fixed?

How broken is Singapore's Elected Presidency?

Once upon a time, Singapore had a president who was its ceremonial head of state.  Like all Commonwealth heads of states, this president presided at annual military parades, gave the President's Speech to open each parliament session, gave assent to legislative bills, approved the national budget, pardoned prisoners, and signed off on the appointment of key positions in the civil service - all on the advice of the government.

Then in 1991 after 5 years of debate in parliament, Singapore had an "elected president". Is he a "check on a rogue government" and "guardian of the reserves"? Depending on who you asked and when you asked, the purview and powers of this president has dramatically waned over the years. The image below is an attempt to summarise the public communications of Singapore's leaders on the elected president over the years, and the growing public disquiet they have engendered.

The presidency has been subject to such strenuous fettering that a public commission headed by the Chief Justice in 2016 recommended Singapore reinstate the ceremonial president, to be advised by a council of state. To the extent that Singapore's law minister described his legal theory of the elected presidency in terms of constitutional scholar Walter Bagehot's concept of the ceremonial monarch of the UK.

The Electoral Department of Singapore recently attempted to educate voters on the role of the presidency, even when it is not the proper or relevant authority on this matter.  That was in addition to requiring candidates to sign a declaration that they "understand the position". Given that Singapore's leaders have an even more fluid and situational understanding of the role of the presidency over the years, this comes across as ironic and hypocritical. If not an outright clown show.

We at Illusio would not be laughing so hard if we didn't also understand that the damage to the valuable institution of the presidency is real, lasting, and severe.

But why is Singapore's elected presidency broken?

It is easy to state that there is an internal contradiction in the elected presidency that undermines its function and legitimacy in the eyes of the people.  It is still relatively easy to argue that this internal contradiction is made apparent from the repeated manoeuvring of the PAP government to refine or redefine the presidency over a period of 30 years. The difficult part is to identify the nature of this internal contradiction. Because it is a two-fold contradiction.

The first contradiction is mechanical; what some political economists might dub the internal contradiction of political accumulation. That is, a government in an enduring one-party state is unlikely to cede power to install a presidency that can effectively check it, and not for long. It is unlikely to resist the urge to increase its monopoly of power over the powers of such a president, in order to evade these checks. It is far more likely that a strong government will constrain such a president by requiring that he only act on the advice of a coterie of mostly retired civil servants, quango mandarins, and GLC parachutees pantomining a Council of State, and thus revert the elected president to a ceremonial head of state.

William Henry Brooke, "Dispute between Monopoly and Power",
in Satirist, 1 March 1813

The second contradiction is political; what some political scientists might dub the internal contradiction of political externalisation. Let us consider the question of the elected president as "guardian of the reserves".

The Budget is a policy decision; the government of the day, having won the mandate at the voting box, proposes what to spend on and how much to spend, including the reserves. What a government proposes with the reserves is a political decision and it should rightfully take responsibility and exercise transparency in making such decisions. Since 1993, Singapore's government occludes the national reserves from normal accountability, disavows its ultimate responsibility, and hoists it theoretically unto an elected president, all while whittling down his powers. This is the first externalisation. 

What to do with the reserves is inherently a policy and political decision. To illustrate, there are swathes of the populace in Singapore (typified by the "return my CPF" movement) who feel that the PAP government has enforced too much savings, reducing their means of investing their own savings on themselves and the economy, and returning too little of the reserves to the people. When most Singaporeans say they want a president who can check the PAP government, when most candidates promise they will demand the government to fully account and publish its reserves, they are externalising a political disagreement on reserves policy onto the office of an "independent", elected president. This is the second externalisation.

Externalising transparency, responsibility, and accountability to a third party;
then taking away the third party's powers!

Is the elected presidency a danger to the elected president?

Given the vast internal contradictions afflicting the office of Singapore's elected president, it is no mystery why each holder of the office has faced legitimacy and mandate issues. We argue that every holder of this office has either acted to overcompensate for these shortcomings by adopting an overactive persona, or to overplay the ceremonial aspects of the presidency. Either the government is angered or voters grow even more disillusioned with the elected presidency. Either way, every holder of the office acts as if the presidency cannot otherwise hold, and mere anarchy is unloosed upon Singapore. Either way, the elected president fails to be an effective adviser and counseller to the government, or fails to be the symbol of national unity and dignity.

As such, we at Illusio consider the elected presidency a most cruel and unusual punishment, and will therefore refuse to endorse any candidate in 2023. For all these reasons, we also endorse the proposal by the 2016 constitutional commission to revert to a ceremonial head of state.