REGISTRATION OF PERSONS BILL

The Chief Secretary (Mr W. A. C. Goode): Mr Speaker, Sir, I present a Bill intituled "An Ordinance to provide for the registration of persons in the Colony, for the issue of identity cards and for purposes connected therewith", and move it be read the First time.

Bill read the First time.

Second Reading

Mr Speaker: Second Reading, what day?

Mr Goode: Now, Sir. Mr Speaker, Sir, I have a Certificate of Urgency over the hand of the Governor declaring that it is necessary for this Bill to be proceeded with through all its stages at this morning's sitting of the House.

Certificate of Urgency handed in.

Mr Speaker: The Certificate is in order. Have you copies of the Bill?

Mr Goode: Yes, Sir. Typed copies of the Bill have already been distributed to hon. Members, and thanks to the good offices of the Clerk of the Assembly, I also have the printed copies available, Sir, which I suggest could be distributed.

Printed copies of the Bill handed in to the Clerk and distributed to hon. Members.

Mr Speaker: Mr Goode, will you please move the Second Reading?

Mr Goode: Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

I must apologise, Sir, to hon. Members of this House that I was not able to introduce this Bill at our sitting last month and thereby give the House longer time to study the Bill. Unfortunately I was not able to get the Bill ready in time before this morning's sitting, and it has therefore been necessary, Sir, for me to ask the House to proceed with all the stages of the Bill this morning.

The Bill is short and seeks merely to provide for the continuation of the system of national registration which, as hon. Members will know, is at present governed by some Emergency Regulations, which Regulations will lapse when the period of the Emergency ceases on 21st October.

I hope, Sir, that this Bill, which is short, will not prove controversial and that Members of this House will agree that the system of identity cards has proved of very real use and assistance to the people of this Colony on all sorts of occasions when they seek an easy means of establishing their identity. I also hope that the House will agree to put this Bill through its stages this morning to enable that system to be continued.

Regulations will be made to provide for the details, and those Regulations will be substantially the same as the existing system, and I very much doubt whether the ordinary citizen of Singapore will, in fact, notice this formal change which I ask the House to make. I beg to move.

The Minister for Health (Mr A. J. Braga): I beg to second.

Question proposed.

Mr John Ede (Tanglin): Mr Speaker, Sir, there are only two points I wish to make. If you look at your identity card, you will find that not only the nationality but also the race of the person has to be filled in. If we are to overcome racial consciousness and racial antagonisms, and if we are to build up a nation, it seems to me that there should be no reference to race on our national registration card. I hope that the Government will look into this matter and see if an early change can be made.

Secondly, now that it has been decided to continue the identity card system, and this has our full support, I hope that the Government will introduce appropriate rules to see that the Singapore citizens get their identity cards in proper order and their addresses up to date. If we are to have accurate electoral rolls, this is essential.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew (Tanjong Pagar): Mr Speaker, Sir, how very true what the Chief Secretary (Mr Goode) has said, that the average citizen of Singapore would not know that there has been any change! But for us, who are conscious that there has been a change, I think it would not be without value to weigh the significance of that change.

The identity card was a product of the war, imported from Britain into Singapore at a time when the Government felt that it was in a state of war. It was part and parcel of the Emergency Regulations; one of those irritating restrictions on personal liberties which we hoped would be got rid of as we get rid of the Emergency. But now it is proposed to make it a part of our normal lives. There is not even a pretence of making it last for only a matter of three years. It is an attempt, without too much publicity, to make the identity card part and parcel of our lives. I am not going into the merits of having a national registration system by which social security can be equitably apportioned and all the other useful by-products of having national registration. I do not wish to debate these points. But I wish to point out, as one who, perhaps unrealistically, believes in a liberal way of life, that it is a marked departure from the normal traditions of a liberal civilised society.

The Chief Minister: You are wrong!

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: I am wrong? May I tell the Chief Minister, Mr Speaker, Sir, that one of the first things they were pleased to do in England, some years after the war - because they had got tied up with the identity card system by tying it up with rationing and all the other necessary regulations in a Socialist state - was to abolish the identity card system? A state of affairs was reached where judges refused to convict citizens when they refused to produce their identity cards on the demand of a police officer.

Sir, one of the evil by-products of this identity card system is that everytime a policeman sees you, he asks, `Teng-kee'? Where is your identity card? " 'Teng-kee manah'?" The unfortunate hawker or pedestrian or cyclist or motorist or lorry-driver begins to look upon this scrap of paper as something which, somehow or the other, gets him down every time.

There have been spirited citizens in Singapore - and I had the privilege of fighting for some of them - who, for traffic offences, have been asked to produce their identity card. It becomes a habit - a policeman asking you, "I want to see who you are, and I want to 'fix' you! Where is your identity card?" It is not an offence connected with the Emergency. It is not an offence connected with the security of the State. It is just a bad habit. These traffic offenders then have to go to court. The police prosecute and say, "Emergency Regulation so and so, on such a day, so and so demanded the identity card." But the citizen who is keenly aware of his democratic rights refused to produce his identity card. I know of a case in England where a British judge, well-known for his asperity, had refused to convict and had castigated the Police for having abused the identity card system. Sir, this identity card system has got nothing to do with motoring offences and all the other minor things in life. But it has become a habit.

In Singapore, when I tried to put forward this liberal point of view, I was smacked down very vigorously and told, "This is quite a different world and, therefore, we have quite different standards. Any citizen, even though he has done nothing to warrant a policeman asking for his identity card, must produce it in conformity with the law, and there must be proper respect for the law." So, the spirited citizen, because he was conscious of his fundamental rights, was properly smacked for $25 and asked to behave himself in the future.

Sir, I hope we are aware that what we are doing today is to accept a system which cannot be defended as democratic. It is not that I am in favour of people going off on lost weekends and not wishing to sign their identity cards on hotel registers; though I think that even such persons should be entitled to certain human liberties and they should not have to put their mark everywhere they go to show that they have been there. "Identity card? - I know mine by heart, because I have signed it so often as 'Four E, 00635'." It is part of the regimentation of a police state, and one of the things we accuse the Communists of doing, that they document people; they regiment them; they get everybody docketed in dossiers. We, in a liberal democracy, believe in liberal conditions. We value human freedom and the liberty of the individual.

I have not heard sufficient argument debated as to why the social schemes which the Government proposes to introduce could not be done in some way other than by the identity card. It is quite possible that it is a convenient way, but the difference is this: we are now making this identity card part and parcel not only of our lives for the period of the Emergency in Malaya, but part and parcel of our normal lives. This, I am sure the Chief Minister will agree, will not be one of those legislative acts of which he could be proud as a democratic and a liberal humanitarian.

Mr Francis Thomas: The Member for Tanjong Pagar (Mr Lee Kuan Yew), Mr Speaker, Sir, referred to the identity card as an irritating restriction on personal liberty. I rather agree that all these things are irritating restrictions. They have to be very often, but they have positive advantages. Traffic lights are often exceedingly irritating, as are restrictions about where you can park your car. They are irritating, but, nevertheless, they are necessary for the general flow of the traffic. Identity cards may very well be necessary for the general running of Singapore. Although the hon. Member says he does not wish to debate the usefulness of the identity card system, I think it is fair to point out, from my personal experience, its usefulness.

During the floods which took place last year - I have already mentioned them this morning - I was concerned with organising a relief centre at which we had some hundreds of people passing through. The maximum was 900 refugees sleeping in the centre in a single night. We organised large distributions of food, clothing, money, chickens and all sorts of things. All passed through the centre, and for that work (which had to be improvised among largely illiterate people) the identity card was absolutely essential. It was the only possible way of seeing that people pass through the queue once, and not two, three, four or five times. It was also essential for a house-to-house survey. Our survey teams went out and some went through about a thousand households and recorded details; and in order to be sure that there was no confusion of any kind, the identity card was solid documentary evidence; where a Chinese name, spoken by a Hokkien, recorded by a Cantonese, is written down in English, it may become an exceedingly different name and may lead to confusion. Therefore, especially in times of emergency, in my personal experience, the identity card is a most valuable and useful piece of social mechanism.

The substance of the hon. Member's argument against identity cards was the occasional abuses that occur, that they are troublesome and that sort of thing. Well, the answer to that, I think, is that if abuses occur, they can be remedied, and this Assembly, as I have pointed out before, is the place to remedy them. It is the fashion at the moment in Singapore to run around talking very vigorously in public assemblies - not this Assembly - but in Kampong Tai Seng or in Farrer Park, or wherever it may be, and to put out a lot of highly contentious propaganda which has very little basis in fact, if there is any. In fact, it is sometimes completely contrary to the facts. That is a way of winning a certain measure of popular support, but it does not affect the law. The place to deal with the law is in the Assembly. The way to deal with any abuse of the law is to bring it to the notice of the Assembly for its joint consideration and action. The fact that abuses may have occurred in the past is an argument for the Assembly to take action to ensure that they do not occur in the future. It is not an argument to throw away a useful part of the social mechanism.

Mr Goode rose -

Mr Speaker: Mr Goode, in reply?

Mr Goode: In reply, Sir. In reply, Mr Speaker, Sir, to the Member for Tanglin (Mr Ede), we will be very ready to look into his suggestion that it is not necessary, and is indeed undesirable, that the registration cards should continue to show 'Race' on them. As regards his second point, which was to ask that a rule should be made to ensure that holders of identity cards keep their addresses up to date, may I remind him and the public of Singapore that that is already a requirement of the system of registration? I do ask all Members of this House, and everybody who has any influence, to try and make sure that a great number of persons in this territory do keep their addresses up to date, because, of course, one of the, I hope, merits of our system of national registration is that it has enabled us to prepare our electoral roll.

The Member for Tanjong Pagar managed to walk his tight rope without making it clear to me whether he was prepared to say he was against registration or he was for it. He contented himself largely with suggesting that it was undemocratic. He is entitled to that opinion. I would merely point out that there are a great number of democratic countries where a system of identity cards has been in force for very many years. He, I suppose, is in a somewhat awkward position. He probably felt that it was necessary to concentrate on what he thought were the undesirable by-products, and I agree that there are some undesirable by-products, but I feel that he tended to ignore the good by-products -

The Chief Minister: As usual!

Mr Goode: Might I suggest, for example, that one by-product of the system of national registration is probably the presence of the hon. Member in this House? But I can see that he is in a difficult position, because, while I have little doubt of his sincerity, he would be the last person to take the benefits of the identity card away from the people of Singapore, he must be very conscious of a number of his associates for whom the system of identity cards is extremely inconvenient. No doubt that leads him, out of some loyalty, to use this as an opportunity to try and attack the members of the Police Force. Well, I leave the House to judge of the merits of that attack.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: On a point of clarification, Sir.

Mr Speaker: Elucidation?

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: Yes, Sir. Mr Speaker, Sir, I am sorry that I left the Hon. the Chief Secretary in doubt as to my stand. I thought it was fundamental to my whole speech that, while I am not prepared to say that the identity card system is unnecessary during the period of the Emergency, I say that this system should not be carried beyond the Emergency.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.