MACE OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

Mr Speaker: Honourable Members will wish it to be recorded that this is the first occasion on which a Mace has found a place in this House, or indeed in any previous Legislative Chamber in Singapore.

Our Mace is the final adjunct of the dignity and prestige of this Assembly, completing, as it does, the accoutrements of the Assembly, the trappings of the Speaker and the panoply of the Serjeant-at-Arms.

We have in our Mace, first and foremost, a symbol of the authority of this Assembly, and in consequence, it is a symbol of the authority of the Speaker and an emblem of office of the Serjeant-at-Arms.

I invite Honourable Members to accept that the Mace is an essential part of the equipment of this Assembly and that this Assembly cannot, in future, be considered to be properly constituted unless the Mace be first brought into the House and laid on the Table.