LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS BILL (Report from Select Committee)

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

2.31 p.m.

The Minister for Local Government, Lands and Housing (Inche Abdul Hamid Bin Haji Jumat): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move the motion standing in my name,

That the Report from the Select Committee on the Local Government Elections Bill, as contained in Sessional Paper No. L. A. 1 of 1957, be adopted, subject to the recommittal of the Bill in respect of clauses 1, 2, 11, 22, 27 and 34 to a Committee of the whole Assembly.

As hon. Members of this Assembly are aware, the Local Government Elections Bill and the Local Government Bill are complementary, and that with the enactment of these two Bills it will then be possible under the new local government organisation to proceed with these elections at the earliest opportunity which, in the case of the City Council, will be in December this year and in the case of the District Councils sometime about March 1958. Members will have observed from the Report that only a few written representations were submitted and that no oral representations were made. Members will wish me to draw attention to the main amendments to the Bill in Select Committee and this I will proceed to do.

Concerning clause 5, a new paragraph (c) has been included to enable citizens of the United Kingdom or Colonies, or persons born in the Federation of Malaya, Sarawak, North Borneo or Brunei to vote after one year's residence. The reason for this is that while the Bill has extended the right to vote to alien nationals with five years' residence, adult persons who are citizens of the United Kingdom or who were born in Malaya, etc., were barred from voting because they have less than five years' residence in Singapore. Nevertheless those same persons with only one year's residence can vote in the Legislative Assembly elections. By this amendment they can now also vote in the local government elections after one year's residence.

With regard to the machinery for elections, amendments have been made to clause 9 to meet representations which have been made advocating improvements to polling arrangements. Sub-clauses (3), (4) and (5) give discretionary powers to the Returning Officer regarding the number and kind of polling stations, and for guidance in the exercise of his discretion the provision of one polling station for every 2,000 voters has been recommended.

The main amendment to clause 10 is a little technical. Briefly, the purpose of the new sub-clause (1), being a telescoped version of old sub-clauses (1), (2), (3) and (4), is to enable arrangements to be made for preparing the Local Government Electoral Rolls corrected up to 1st April, 1957, instead of 1st April, 1956. In anticipation of the City Council elections in December, electoral rolls corrected up to 1st April, 1957, are now under preparation. Claims and objections will of course follow the procedure given in clause 11.

Turning now, Sir, to clause 66, the purpose of the provision which has been added to paragraph (a) of sub-clause (1) is to make it clear that either payment for or contract to pay for any petroleum used for vehicles which may be lawfully used for the conveyance of electors to and from the polling booths is not constituted as a legal practice. It expressly provides that such payments shall be regarded as expenses within the meaning of clause 65 which limits the total expenses which may be incurred by candidates.

Apart from the amendments which I have already described, Members are aware that I have a number of further amendments to make as given in the Notice of Amendments. These are all minor amendments except those to clauses 22 and 34. The purpose of the amendment to clause 22 is to rectify an omission by making express provision for filling a casual vacancy within two months. Concerning the amendment to clause 34 this simply is designed to ensure that the date on which the poll is taken is not less than 16 days from the date of the notice of election. Sir, I beg to move.

The Minister for Commerce and Industry (Mr J. M. Jumabhoy): Sir, I rise to second the motion and reserve my right to speak at a later stage.

Question proposed.

2.37 p.m.

Mr John Ede (Tanglin): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move an amendment to the motion,

In line 3, after "2," to insert "8.".

Amendment handed in.

Mr Speaker: The amendment is in order. Please proceed.

Mr John Ede: Sir, clause 8 at present reads:

"The Minister may, from time to time, by notification published in the Gazette specify the names and boundaries of the electoral divisions of any local government area for purposes of elections under this Ordinance." Sir, this means that any alterations to the boundaries in the electoral divisions or any demarcation of the boundaries of electoral divisions in any local government area can be done by the Minister without reference to this House or without notification through the Government Gazette or through newspapers, or without reference to representations and objections by members of the public. Now Sir, this morning in answer to a question by the Member for Serangoon [Mr Lim Choon Mong] as to whether an All-Party Committee was going to be set up to consider the all-important question of these electoral divisions in the local government areas, we heard the answer was in the negative except possibly that these electoral divisions which have already been worked out will be referred or have been referred in the last few days to an All-Party Committee for its observations and for some reconciliation of the proposed boundaries with the limits of the general election constituencies.

Sir, we object to this in principle. You will find if you refer to clauses 5 and 15 of the Local Government Bill with which we shall be dealing later, that it is provided there that no alteration shall be made to the limits of the City or the Districts unless and until such alterations have been notified in four successive Gazettes and in the newspapers of four different languages with an invitation to persons to make objections. We intend when we come to the Local Government Bill to move amendments to add a proviso that these alterations should be notified in respect of the new limits to the City and the Districts which are of course the most important ones of all and of very considerable proportions. It is our view, therefore, that if this is to be found in the Local Government Bill with regard to the City limits, the same principles should be applied to the electoral divisions, to the Bill now in question.

As I said, Sir, an All-Party Committee is not going to be set up to consider these boundaries despite a request that this be done, and the result is that Government does lay itself open to the charge of manipulation of the electoral boundaries to suit party interests if the boundaries are imposed on people and are not open to such representations. Any government, I am sure, will not wish to make themselves a party to that suspicion. It is therefore in our view essential that this matter should be considered in the Committee stage. I do not propose, Sir, to speak further on it at this stage.

2.42 p.m.

Mr Lim Choon Mong (Serangoon): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise to second the amendment. I believe that under clause 8 of this Local Government Elections Bill the Minister is given considerable powers, and that this clause should be read in conjunction with the intention of Government trying to force through what seems to me to be something in the interests of the governing Party.

I will put a few instances before you, Sir. I have just received information that Government has already set up a Committee to consider the divisions of the City Council and that it has already made up its mind as to what it should be. I understand the recommendations have already been accepted by the Minister for Local Government, Lands and Housing (Inche Abdul Hamid bin Haji Jumat) as well as by the Council of Ministers. I take it, Sir, that in the matter of elections, not just the interests of one Party are involved, nor even the interests of the governing Party; the interests of all political Parties are concerned. I have glanced through a little part of the Report and I am alarmed, Sir, at the way the Government has fixed the divisions. At best, it can be said to be political manoeuvring. There is the case of Tanjong Pagar being given three representatives in local council elections, but Cairnhill is to be given only a little more than one, say one-and-a-half to two, and Tanglin also one-and-a-half. I have noted the reasons given. The Report says that this is based on the estimated electoral strength but I cannot understand, from what I have seen, why in one area with about 30,000 people the voting strength is calculated at 18,000 while for another area with about the same number of people the voting strength is put at 12,000. How were these figures established? Did Government have statistics to support its calculations of estimates of future votes? Is it that one area consists mainly of children, or in another that there are more aliens? The disparity in the figure is too great to make them true.

The Committee has also stated that one line it followed is community interest but I fail to see this being followed, especially in the Cairnhill area where one section of predominantly local-born people, in Emerald Hill Road, is carved out and included with other divisions. Where is the similarity of community interest in this grouping of different peoples? The statement is just not convincing.

We can quote more examples of how things are being manipulated. In the case of Whampoa, we find that the area is going to sprawl over to Serangoon Road and to embrace Kallang right up to Kallang Road, instead of going East into Potong Pasir or west into Rangoon Road.

Such are the inconsistencies suggested by the Committee set up by the Government. The Government may say it is a Committee consisting only of Government officials and that no Party is involved and not one single Party is represented on it. Let me say, however, that Government servants have to carry out the policy of the Government; they are the servants of the Government and the Government in power is that of the Labour Front Coalition.

Sir, the elections provided for in this Bill should be carried out in the most fair manner, fair to all Parties concerned, and an All-Party Committee should be set up to give its views on the matter. As matters stand, the Government is using a very unfair way of getting a favourable position. The Liberal-Socialist Party wants the elections to be fair and nothing else. It feels that Government should be a responsible one, that it should not try to force other Parties to accept what it feels will be good only to itself. If the Government thinks that in the elections it needs a handicap, it should ask for it - probably it would get it. If the Government feels that it can fight the elections only after tying up its opponent's hands, it should declare its intentions. But it will really be a shameful matter if it seeks an advantage by hiding behind a so-called non-Party Committee.

I certainly feel, Sir, that clause 8 should be included for reconsideration in Committee, in which we will explain fully our stand. Sir, I beg to second the amendment.

Mr Speaker: it has been moved as an amendment to the original Question, after "2," to insert "8,". The Question is, "That the figure proposed to be inserted, be there inserted."

2.50 p.m.

The Chief Secretary (Mr W. A. C. Goode): Sir, I notice with some interest that this "very serious" matter now brought forward by the Member for Tanglin [Mr John Ede] and his colleague the Member for Serangoon [Mr Lim Choon Mong] was apparently not in their minds at all when this clause was considered in the Select Committee on this Bill. For according to the Report this clause was agreed to with no particular discussion and there was only one fairly minor technical arrangement. That is not altogether surprising on second thoughts, because it does seem to me that there is a very big difference between the boundaries of District Councils and the City Council, and the boundaries of divisions. When the Select Committee on the Local Government Bill was considering the boundaries between the City Council and the District Councils, there was, as the hon. Member for Tanglin said, a great discussion, and that is a matter on which I have no doubt there will be further debate. Now a decision whether or not to put a certain area within the boundaries of the City Council or within the boundaries of a District Council is a matter which must affect very directly every person living within that area, because in the one case his affairs and rates and taxes will be in the hands of the City Council, and in the other case those affairs will be in the hands of a District Council. But I see no parallel at all, Sir, between this and the division of an area into constituencies for the purpose of polling. I would hazard the opinion, Sir, that the ordinary voter in Singapore has very little personal interest whether he goes to a polling station in a constituency called Cairnhill or one called Tanglin, whatever name you would like to suggest. The first concern of the voter surely is merely that he should be able to exercise his vote with the minimum inconvenience, that is to say that the polling station should be reasonably near his place of residence.

The persons who are concerned with the division of the City Council into electoral constituencies are, of course, the political Parties, and that, I think, is the rub of this issue, and the real case for recommitting clause 8 is the case that was put by the hon. Member for Serangoon. I regret that he should feel that he must regard the boundaries which have been drawn up as having been manipulated. He said he could not believe that these boundaries had been drawn up in an objective way without Party bias and without a policy directive from the Government. Sir, I cannot of course deny him his beliefs or his views, but I can say that this task of dividing the new City area into 32 constituencies was a task tackled by a Committee of officials with no policy directive from Ministers other than the basic directive to draw up 32 areas on the basis of the franchise as laid down in the Bill. And it was very much a technical problem. In fact I think if members of any political Party were to try to divide the City area into 32 constituencies in order to rig the elections they would have very great difficulty in doing so without arriving at an answer which would, on the face of it, be absurd. It is not an easy task to divide a City area into constituencies. There are a number of considerations which are decisive, The first is to try to get boundaries which do have some natural, self-evident justification, such as the line of a stream or the line of a water channel or some other natural boundary: and the second consideration is to try as far as possible to get approximately the same number of voters in each division. That latter task cannot of course at the moment be based on definite figures. The hon. Member for Serangoon indicated that he thought the figures on which the Committee worked were not reliable ones, implying that they had not been properly estimated. Now it is impossible to prove how many voters we shall find in any given area. All we can do is to take the total number of people living in an area, which we can get, and having regard to the number of present voters in the area, look as intelligently as we can at the make-up of that area and then estimate what effect the introduction of aliens who have lived there for five years will have on the rolls. It was because an allowance was made for an uneven incidence of voters coming on to the rolls that you find that in some existing constituencies, the subdivision is greater than in others.

There is no attempt whatsoever to make the Tanjong Pagar division into three divisions because we think the three new divisions will be won by any one political Party; it has been done entirely on objective considerations of trying to get approximately the same number of persons in each division, following as far as possible natural boundaries.

However, there have been several cases where the natural boundary, and in particular an existing boundary which is known, gave us a result which did not seem to be acceptable. One case was that of the Cairnhill constituency. We had too many people in the proposed Cairnhill division and not enough in the neighbouring division to the West. The solution adopted was to remove a certain number of persons who now live in the Cairnhill area and switch them to the neighbouring area (I forget the exact name of it). The reason this particular area was chosen was that it seemed to be the area most closely related to the other division.

I am sorry that hon. Members opposite should adopt the view that the Committee worked to a political directive and was not being objective. I can only assure you that that was not so and I would add one last word, Sir, which is that if hon. Members contemplate any considerable revision of the boundaries of divisions at this stage, then it will not be possible to have City Council elections in December. I am not for a moment denying this House the opportunity, if it so wishes, to revise the electoral division boundaries. If it wishes to do that, let it be done. But what I would say is if that is done to anything more than a very, very minor extent, City Council elections cannot be held in December.

2.59 p.m.

Mr Lee Choon Eng (Queenstown): Mr Speaker, Sir, what has just been said is new to me. In the last few minutes I have been told that Government has finalised the demarcation of divisions within the City Council and that a Report has been circulated to all Parties concerned. This is another case of the Independents being snubbed. I cannot see why that Report should not be circulated to Independent Members as well.

The Hon. the Chief Secretary has said that it is not the duty or responsibility of voters to be concerned in the fixing of boundaries. I think he is entirely wrong and I do not agree with him. Voters in each division, whether attached to a political Party or not, are greatly concerned in the demarcation of boundaries as they may wish to put up their own candidates who may not belong to any Party. They have a right if they want to, to nominate their own candidates as Independents and it is therefore their concern that they should know where their electoral boundaries are. I am very glad that the Chief Secretary (or is it the Member for Serangoon?) has said that it is not a demarcation by the Government Party. It is a few Government officials who have been directed by the Government Party to demarcate such divisions. There is all the more reason why the Report should have been brought to this Assembly rather than circulated to all Parties concerned. In this Assembly we have the Government Party which is an alliance government of three political Parties, and on the Opposition benches we have the Liberal-Socialists and the P.A.P. I am quite sure that in Singapore we have more political Parties than what we have here. There is the Party Ra'ayat and why should not this Party be consulted then? I think the Government may not consider that the Party Ra'ayat is a political Party, and if that be so, why then register that Party as a political Party? The Independents are always snubbed for one reason or another. This concerns the elections and it affects not only the Members of this Assembly but also the whole public as well. I would therefore like to record my protest at the way in which the Independents are treated in this Assembly.

The Chief Minister: Mr Speaker, Sir, my colleague the Chief Secretary has explained the working of this official Committee that has been set up by the Government. It answers the allegation made by the hon. mover and seconder of the amendment that there has been manipulation by the Party in power.

Mr Lim Choon Mong: It does not answer that.

The Chief Minister: Sir, I would like to refute that allegation, and the only thing I would like to say at this stage is that such an allegation could only come from the mind of somebody who, if he had been in the position where we are today, might have thought it possible and practicable. We on this side of the House, Sir, did not even think of it. An official body was appointed comprising the Chief Statistician, the Deputy Secretary to the Ministry of Local Government, Lands and Housing, the Planning Adviser to the S.I.T., and a representative of the Survey Department.

Sir, the Government accepts the amendment by the Members of the Liberal-Socialist Party to recommit clause 8 of the Bill, and as this clause will be fully debated during the Committee stage, I feel that it will serve no useful purpose for us to have a lengthy debate on this now and thereby prolong the debate on the motion before the House.

In regard to the points raised by the Member for Queenstown, Sir, I have had occasion this morning to say that the hon. Member had difficulty in understanding the English language. I find. Sir, -

Mr Lee Choon Eng: It is not my language.

The Chief Minister: I find that the same position still obtains in the remarks that he has levelled at the speech of the Chief Secretary. He says the voter is of course interested in the electoral division in which he is to be placed. The Chief Secretary has not said so. What the Chief Secretary has said is this: that the voter is interested to see that he has a vote and he is not interested whether it is to be this part of Cairnhill or that part of Cairnhill. He can still exercise his vote.

Then the hon. Member, referring to the Report of this official Committee on demarcation, stated that it had been given to all members of the All-Party Committee. Sir, it is an All-Party Committee set up by the Government to consider the demarcation of Singapore into 51 divisions, and it is to enable them to make a proper study of the facts and figures as gathered by this official Committee that the Report is handed to them.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: Mr Speaker, Sir, since the Government has decided to accept this amendment to the motion by the Minister for Local Government, Lands and Housing, there is very little that remains to be said except this. On principle it is advisable to have the work of this Committee placed before all political Parties. If there has been no gerrymandering it would be obvious to everybody, and everybody would then be quite happy. But whether or not there has been an unconscious bias in the work of any official so as to justify the allegations made by the Member for Serangoon, one can only judge from the vehemence of his allegations and the corresponding vehemence of the denials of the Chief Minister and the Chief Secretary. Nothing would be lost if the reasons for the delineations are placed before an All-Party Committee. If the Committee is fully aware of the fact that any radical alteration to the boundary lines may well lead to a postponement of the elections, that is a responsibility which will be shouldered by every political Party.

Amendment agreed to.

Question, as amended, put, and agreed

Resolved,

"That the Report from the Select Committee on the Local Government Elections Bill, as contained in Sessional Paper No. L. A. 1 of 1957, be adopted, subject to the recommittal of the Bill in respect of clauses 1, 2, 8, 11, 22, 27 and 34 to a Committee of the whole Assembly."

Committee on Thursday, 25th July, 1957.