Some thoughts on Tan Jee Say's campaign strategy so far, obvious as it is that he is out to get votes from the anti-PAP Singaporeans.
Checks and Balances
While I am fully in favour of the concept of checks and balances against government powers (from my libertarian streak), I feel that using the Presidential Elections as a platform is highly misleading, and I am dismayed (but hardly surprised) that there are Singaporeans who have been taken in by his tricks.
The fact of the matter is that nothing in our constitutional tradition suggests that the Presidency is a source of independent power in itself capable of challenging the government. It is as ludicrous as saying that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II can act as a check on the UK government.
It would appear to me that Tan Jee Say is tapping on the unhappiness of the people who voted for the opposition parties during the last GE and who felt that they had 'lost' that contest to dumber Singaporeans (I have seen opposition supporters say this of Singaporeans who voted for the PAP) who supported the PAP.
Constitutional Powers
He also challenged the Law Minister, saying that the latter's interpretation of the constitutional provisions in respect of the powers of the President may not be the only valid one. This is an argument clearly designed to hoodwink his supporters and to give them false hopes.
From Section 9A of the Interpretation Act (enacted following the landmark UK House of Lords decision in Pepper v Hart), we know that where there are ambiguities in statute, courts can have recourse to extrinsic materials such as records of Parliamentary debates in order to help with the purposive interpretation of written provisions. If the interpretation of the powers of the President were unclear and open to competing views, the courts would have recourse to Parliamentary debate records, which clearly show that Parliament did not intend for the President to have the powers that Tan Jee Say and his supporters think that the office possesses. So unless the Law Minister doesn't know his stuff, which appears to be unlikely since he had been a top-notch lawyer previously, it is not likely that any legal challenge to settle the issue would resolve in favour of the view proffered by Tan Jee Say.
Disregard for the Law
It has been reported that Tan Jee Say had said that, if elected, he would not be prevented by the circumscribed role of the Presidency from raising sensitive issues with the government. He had also said that the Presidency is what the office-holder makes of it. For example, he suggested that the President should be involved in Singapore's economic strategies (surprise, surprise!), which even an idiot like me know is beyond the prerogatives of the Presidency.
To me, this shows that he has no respect for the Constitution. While it is perfectly permissible for a Singapore citizen to feel that the Constitution has flaws and ought to be reformed, integrity demands that one should seek change through the right channels, and not use a position created pursuant to the Constitution to subvert it.
Moral Power
The third argument used by Tan Jee Say to justify his position is to claim that the Presidency has moral power. I find this claim untenable given the largely ceremonial role of the office, which does not provide much opportunities for it to develop moral authority in the hearts and minds of Singaporeans. Furthermore, there is also nothing in our constitutional tradition (e.g. through unwritten conventions) that suggests the existence of such powers, unlike other Westminster-based jurisdictions like the UK.
In summary, I find that Tan Jee Say has campaigned using a strategy designed to exploit the unhappiness of a segment of Singaporean against the government, and have acted like a politician (in the derogatory sense) in his contest for what should be an apolitical office through the liberties he had taken with truth and the deliberate creation of false impressions.
As previously suggested on this blog, I feel that he has an agenda which, although unclear to me, does not appear to be one of benign intent.
