NOMINATED MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT

Debate resumed.

Dr Michael Lim Chun Leng (Cheng San GRC): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, the issue of Nominated MPs has been put through a mental sieve by many Members when it was first debated in 1989. The records in the Hansard are testament to the thoroughness in which the issue was debated. I do not intend to quote or reiterate the views that had been stated but rather I will state my personal views.

I think there are two main fundamental points to address. Firstly, is there a role for NMPs? My view is that there is. I think NMPs can provide alternative non-partisan views. There is a wealth of talent in Singapore. Members in this House are a microcosm of this wealth of talent. However, there are people who are highly capable and well respected in their fields but fight shy of politics. If inducted into Parliament, they can provide non-partisan views. They will not be handicapped by the need to oppose good policies for the sake of opposition. The NMPs are members who do not belong to the ruling Party and, yet, they provide credible, constructive, alternative views.

I refer to the statement made by the Member for Hougang just now. He said that the scenario may arise where you may only have ten elected Members and 70 nominated Members. I think this is an unlikely scenario. He has missed the point. There is no need for the ruling Party to get Nominated MPs to push Bills through. We have more than enough to make up the votes. The point is that we want non-partisan people to be able to provide constructive viewpoints. He said that he did not know what were the reasons for NMPs. I suggest that, perhaps, he goes through the records in the Hansard and the reasons are quite clearly stated there. Until the day comes when the Opposition Members can throw aside emotions and offer constructive viable alternative views and policies, I see NMPs as playing a complementary role in espousing alternative views.

Secondly, although I believe that, as a rule, political office should only be held by those who have undergone the electoral process, there may be exceptional circumstances when it may be beneficial for the Government and the country to appoint an NMP to high political office. Although some Members may feel strongly about this, I believe that this would give us another safeguard. One cannot predict when such a need may arise. It is better to be safe than sorry.

Thirdly, NMPs can also represent the interests of majority groups. In this respect, I refer to the under-representation of women in this Parliament. Certainly, women are not the minority interest group. No matter how well men try to understand issues regarding women, I doubt that they will ever do it as well as women themselves. I believe that if capable women are selected to be NMPs, the interest of the fairer sex will be better represented.

The other fundamental question is: is the NMP avenue an easy way out for those who aspire to be in Parliament? To put this in perspective, we must cast aside emotions. Not all of us are made in the same mould. Those who have stood for elections have the temperament and the disposition to weather the political elections, devote a large part of their time to the community and seek to reflect the views of the average Singaporeans in Parliament. True, this is our strength to know what an average Singaporean needs and how he feels. The NMP may not be cast in a similar mould and he may never be able to fulfil this role. However, the NMP is also a person who is established and well-respected in his profession and is able to use his wealth of experience to offer views that may provide an insight to areas which he is well-qualified in. Being established in his own profession, the public office as an NMP will not do much to enhance his image further.

Hence, we must not assume that people selected to assume the office of an NMP are looking for an easy route to Parliament but rather we must be positive and look upon it as an avenue where capable people can also be inducted to play a positive role for the nation and the highest body of the nation, the Parliament.

Sir, I support the motion.

Mr Charles Chong (Eunos GRC): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, thank you for allowing me to join in the debate. Sir, I support the motion moved by the Leader of the House.

The subject of Nominated MPs was thoroughly debated during the last Parliament, both during the Second Reading as well as the Third Reading. In addition, a Select Committee hearing was held when the subject was discussed by members of the public. At the end of the day, the Seventh Parliament accepted the need for Nominated MPs.

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, many of the points raised then have been raised once again today. I shall try my best not to go over the previous arguments other than to state that, since the Nominated MP scheme was adopted, the situation in this House has not changed that significantly despite the presence of a few more Opposition MPs.

In the last Parliament, there were two Opposition MPs, one elected and one Non-Constituency MP. In this Parliament, the number of Opposition MPs has increased to only four out of a total of 81 Members. However, the presence of these four Opposition MPs and the alternative views that they have expressed in this House so far have really not been so significant that should cause anyone to want to review or withdraw the Nominated MP scheme.

Sir, I would like to comment on the point raised that MPs elected into Parliament should represent national interest and not sectional interest. In an ideal world, only candidates that represent national interest should be elected into Parliament. However, the sad reality is that candidates can and some even do get elected into Parliament by just concentrating on majority interests with little regard for minority, or national, interests.

In our first-past-the-post system, a candidate needs only one vote more than the 50% to be elected into Parliament. In an ideal situation, elected MPs are also expected to put sectional interest aside and speak up for national interest. In reality, does this happen all the time?

I recall that when the House discussed the restoration of CPF cuts during one of the Budget debates, it was not too difficult to predict which MPs would speak up for the workers and which MPs would speak up for the employers. Should the House decide to discuss language and culture, I think it will be even easier to predict which MPs would jump up and speak passionately on these issues. In striving for the ideal, we should never let wishful thinking blind us from reality.

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, the question of minority representation in Parliament should have been resolved with the introduction of the Group Representation Constituency system. However, examination of the composition of the Seventh Parliament would reveal that, despite the GRC System, a segment of our population had no representation in Parliament. There was no ethnic Eurasian MP in our last Parliament. It is my hope that this shortcoming will be put right during the Eighth Parliament through the Nominated MP scheme.

Examination of the composition of this Parliament will also show that there are only two women Members out of 81 Members in this House. But surely this is a gross under-representation of a major segment of our population. Hopefully, in a small way, we can reduce this inequity by adding a few more women Members in this House through the Nominated MP scheme.

Finally, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I feel that a total of six Nominated MPs may not make a significant impact among 81 elected MPs. Nominated MPs are also not likely to be able to topple the Government as their powers are limited on certain issues. However, if intelligently selected, Nominated MPs can play an important role in providing a voice for more segments of our population that are not represented, or that are under-represented, in this Parliament.

With that, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I support the motion.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: First of all, I would like to thank all those Members who have spoken in support of this motion.

For those who have spoken against the motion, I have heard nothing new. There is more heat than light. They have gone through some old grounds. Some, in fact, probably did not even look at what was debated in the past and repeated the same old points. I will just take one example, not specifically trying to single out Mr Ling. All the points that he has brought up have been answered in the Prime Minister's speech in 1989. If he had bothered to read the speech, then he would probably have raised a different question and not rehash the same position, same problem and the same questions that were raised previously.

The questions raised by MPs actually arise from two aspects. Firstly, that the two NMPs have not been contributing to our satisfaction and, therefore, we have not been able to see the merits of having NMPs in this Parliament. Secondly, Members question whether this is against parliamentary democracy or not, and why do we need unelected Members in this Chamber when we already have enough views been canvassed from the PAP as well as from the Opposition.

Let me take the first point on the two NMPs. To be fair to them, they have done a good job. I have looked through the records and I do not agree with Dr Tan Cheng Bock when he said that there were 22 sittings in that Parliament and Prof. Choo spoke seven times and Mr Leong Chee Whye, four times. If he were to interpret ---

Dr Tan Cheng Bock: It is not that they spoke seven times, or four times. Of the 22 sittings, one spoke in seven sittings and the other in four sittings; and in each sitting, they did cover a number of topics.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: That is also not quite a true representation of what had taken place. Of the 22 sittings that we had between 20th December 1990 and 29th July 1991, Parliament sat for 22 days. But if Dr Tan were to take the number of times that Parliament was convened, Parliament actually was convened only seven times. So in a situation like, say, the debate on the President's Address, no Member can speak more than once, yet we have five days of debate on the President's Address. And if he says, therefore, the NMP only spoke once out of the five days and he had not done enough work, this is not correct. This point ought to be clarified, otherwise people may have the wrong impression that NMPs have not contributed much. I have looked at their records in Hansard also. They had spoken on a wide variety of issues, not just in their area of specialisation, like medicine, or business, but many of the issues that they brought up were quite outside their area of specialisation. That is a fair comment if you were to examine the Hansard very carefully.

Whether they are inferior or third-class MPs, all of us have seen them and I do not think the NMPs themselves feel inferior to any of us here. I think they have acquitted themselves well. I would even venture to guess that they did much better than the Opposition.

On the question of whether this is against Parliamentary democracy or not, I recall the Prime Minister quoting extensively from a book on the Constitution of Britain. He did go through examples of what a Parliament actually consists of. And in the mother of all Parliaments - Great Britain - their Parliament consists of the Queen, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. In the House of Lords, there are 1,192 Members. Do we say that is undemocratic?

Mr Chiam See Tong: Can I seek a clarification? Is the Leader of the House saying that we are going to transform our system into two Houses. If he is going to transform it into two Houses, we are willing to accept all the Nominated MPs. We are comparing different things.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: Which means you are not against the idea of an unelected Chamber.

Mr Chiam See Tong: No.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: Not at all. Therefore, if you are not against the idea of an unelected Chamber, why are you against the idea of having unelected Members in this one Chamber?

Mr Low Thia Khiang: Clarification, Sir. The power of the elected Chamber is restricted. I believe in Great Britain, the Upper House and the Lower House have different functions.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: No.

Mr Chiam See Tong: I want to ask the Leader one question. Is he proposing a dual House? Is he proposing that?

Mr Wong Kan Seng: That is a different matter which we are not discussing today. What I am trying to explain to you is that in the mother of all Parliaments, they have unelected Members.

An hon. Member: Where is the father?

Mr Wong Kan Seng: Maybe if you look at the father of all Parliaments, there is another one. Let us take the example of the United States. The United States has a Congress, comprising a House of Representatives and the Senate, the Elected President, and yet the whole Cabinet of the President of the United States is unelected.

Mr Chiam See Tong rose ---

Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Wong, are you giving way?

Mr Chiam See Tong: He brought up a very important point which has to be clarified.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: Let him carry on.

Mr Chiam See Tong: Is he going to have a separation of powers like America? If he is, then we will have the same system as them. Then we can have any number of Cabinet Ministers who are nominated. Is he?

Mr Wong Kan Seng: I think Mr Chiam jumps to the conclusion too soon.

Mr Chiam See Tong: No, I am not.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: In fact, what I am leading to is there is not just one model of democracy. There are different kinds of democracy. We have inherited the Westminster type of democracy. And over the years, from experience, from what we have learnt from other people, from the implementation of our own system, we have evolved a system that is most suitable to our own needs. I think that is a factor which we must all remember. No two countries are the same. We must be able to learn from others, adapt the good experiences and apply to our own circumstances, so that we can do better ourselves. And that is how Singapore stays ahead. We cannot blindly copy other people, and I can quote you examples of countries which have just borrowed wholesale the American system, and they have done quite miserably.

So we have to be very careful about this. When we inherited the system in 1962 ---

Mr Chiam See Tong: Can I clarify?

Mr Deputy Speaker: Are you giving way, Mr Wong?

Mr Wong Kan Seng: Yes.

Mr Chiam See Tong: By all means, we can evolve our system. But I think it is only fair that the electorate should know that we are going to evolve a certain system. Did you or did you not tell the electorate that you are going to have NMPs before the elections?

Some hon. Members: Yes.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: That question can quite simply be answered by looking at the records of the Opposition's speeches during the elections. Did they campaign against the NMP scheme? If they were so against the issue, did they say, "No, let us turn this around and have more Opposition in Parliament," and overturn this system and not to have NMPs? That is the key question. In fact, Mr Chiam should examine his records.

As I said, we have to evolve our own system. We had a system in the past where MPs could change parties and cause instability in the Government, and we amended the law to make sure that if you change your party after you were elected, you have to go back to the people for another mandate, and that stopped the change. When we had all PAP Members in this Chamber and we wanted to accommodate an alternative view, the Opposition view, we again changed to allow for NCMPs. And that again we learned from experience. And knowing that we may sometimes face difficulties in electing minority candidates, we changed the system to allow for GRCs to ensure that minority candidates are elected. Having two parties in the Chamber necessarily will entail adversarial politics. I think we cannot run away from it. We can see examples of this during debates in this Chamber. The PAP Members and the Government always state one point of view, the Government's point of view, the Opposition another. Having NMPs will provide us with an alternative point of view, which can be unbiased, which can be independent and which just concentrates on the substance of the debate and on the issue without getting emotional about it, without having to go and campaign for votes and speak to the gallery. I think that is the most important point.

Some of our MPs here also say that if we really want to have NMPs and if they become Ministers, then how can we have Ministers who are not accountable to the electorate? Again, all we need to do is to look at other countries. There are countries bigger than ours, there are countries wealthier than ours, there are countries with more talent than ours, and these are the countries which are also democracies. The United States, 220-230 million people, the whole of the Bush Cabinet is unelected. In Britain, 50 million people, the whole of the House of Lords is unelected. Maybe Members may not have heard, in Germany, 70-80 million people and yet they have unelected Ministers. You might have heard of Mr Kinkel, the Foreign Minister of Germany, who was sworn in a couple of weeks ago. Up to today, he is still an unelected MP. In fact, when Mr Kinkel became the Justice Minister just about a year and a half ago, he was not even a member of the Free Democrats Party which nominated him as the Justice Minister. Here we have a country, richer, wealthier, stronger, having more talented people and yet they see it fit to have unelected people to take office if the need arises. What more of Singapore? For three million people, we assume that we will be able to find all the talent that we need to form the Cabinet. Today, yes, in future, who knows? Can we predict what may happen in the future? I think it would be foolish of us to throw away that possibility and not to have NMPs become Ministers.

For those who say that we must have a mandate, well, MPs are elected as representatives of the people. They are not delegates of the people. They have the responsibility to decide what is best for the nation. They are not people's delegates who have to go back to the people every time there is a question. In that case, we do not have to have a government. We just have a referendum whenever an issue is to be debated and we just seek a public opinion poll and decide on the issue. But that is not the system that we have. We have a system that is based on representative government and therefore we should keep it.

Some say there are enough channels of feedback, communication, views are given and so on. Yes, we have. We have Opposition Members, we have PAP Members, we have Feedback Unit and a whole host of other organisations. But what is there to be lost by having NMPs in this House to give viewpoints and opinions that are not necessarily widely canvassed? What do we have to lose? I think for the PAP, there is nothing to lose. For the Opposition, it may show up the inadequacies of their performance and therefore there is a concern that NMPs may undermine their position. Looking at the debate at the last Parliament as well as during the Committee of Supply and Budget debates, we have heard noth-ing very much from the Opposition. And all the more, even though we have only four Opposition Members, we should continue to have NMPs in this House.

Mr Chiam See Tong: We object to the fact that we were not performing well. But the votes did not reflect that. If what you say were true, then the Opposition votes would have been less. Since you say that the Opposition has not been performing well, then we should not have got the votes that we had at the last elections. But the votes prove you wrong.

Mr Wong Kang Seng: If the SDP has the majority support, then they should have contested in 81 constituencies and they should be here today as the government. But they have not been able to do so. Why? Try it. I think the next time round, commit yourself to 81 candidates.

Mr Chiam See Tong: We will try.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: Commit, not try. Not just trying it, commit yourself that you will field 81 candidates and we shall let the people decide who they want to be the government. I think that is fair.

Mr Chiam See Tong: All right.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: Yes, indeed.

Mr Ling How Doong: Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, Mr Wong Kan Seng has just said that we need the NMPs to point out the mistakes of the Opposition. Is he suggesting that the present Members have failed in their duty and you need NMPs to come to this Parliament to point out the flaws of the Opposition MPs? Clarify this point for us.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: First of all, Mr Ling should listen very carefully to what I say. I did not say that we need the NMPs here to point out your mistakes. I just said that it shows your inadequacies. Inadequacies are not mistakes. And for the PAP, we have no fear about it.

As for Mr Chiam's point about contesting in 81 seats, indeed, if he were to say for the record that he will contest 81 seats at the next elections, we shall wait for him. But at the last elections in 1991, he said that he would let the PAP form the Government. Now, will he tell us that in the next elections, he shall contest all the 81 seats?

Mr Chiam See Tong: If the Government is willing to tell us when is the next general elections, we will take up the challenge. You just tell us when will be the next elections. Is it going to be in 1985 or 1986?

An hon. Member: 1985?

Mr Chiam See Tong: In 1995 or 1996. If you can just give us the date, we will take up the challenge.

An hon. Member: It is three or four years from now.

Mr Chiam See Tong: No, give us the exact date.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: Whether it is on the 28th December 1996 or the 25th December 1995, it is irrelevant. Mr Chiam has four or five years to get 81 candidates to contest the next elections. That is what is relevant.

Mr Chiam See Tong: You have put up a challenge. We have rebutted it. You tell us exactly what date it is and we will take up the challenge.

Mr Wong Kan Seng: I do not know how many years' notice does Mr Chiam want. If five years is not enough, how many years does he want? What date does he want to have?

Mr Deputy Speaker: Order. Will hon. Members please keep to the subject instead of digressing?

Mr Wong Kan Seng: In fact, after every general election, there has always been adequate notice for the next elections. And that is the basis for the PAP governing from year to year, from term to term, because after the general elections, we prepare for the next elections. After the last elections, the SDP should do the same thing and prepare for the next elections.

Mr Low Thia Khiang: Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I thought it is out of order!

Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Wong, can you carry on, please?

Mr Wong Kan Seng: I have finished.

Resolved,

"That this Parliament, in accordance with section 1(1) of the Fourth Schedule to the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore, resolves that there shall be nominated Members during the term of this Parliament." - [Mr Wong Kan Seng].