Upholding the integrity of the NCMP Scheme

Last Friday’s combative parliamentary debate on filling Ms Lee Li Lian’s vacated Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) seat offered a foretaste of the dynamics between the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) and the Workers’ Party’s (WP) in the 13th Parliament.

The transfer of an NCMP seat within an opposition party has no precedent. The closest similarity happened in 1985, when the People’s Action Party (PAP) moved a motion to fill the vacated NCMP seat after WP’s M P D Nair had declined it after the 1984 General Election (GE). It was then offered to Singapore United Front’s Tan Chee Kien, who also declined the seat. Parliament then opted to keep NCMP seat empty even though it was the first time the NCMP scheme was introduced.

It is perhaps timely to relook the law governing the filling of vacated NCMP seats. Currently, the law provides that Parliament may fill a vacated NCMP seat. This should be changed to make the filling of a vacated seat automatic without Parliament having to decide whether to fill the vacated seat or not.

Secondly, the law should prohibit “intra-party” transfer of seats (as with the Lee Li Lian and Daniel Goh situation). This precludes parties engaging in a “political manoeuvre”, in the words of Government Whip Chan Chun Sing in last Friday’s debate.

The overall intent of both proposals is to ensure the integrity of the NCMP scheme. The first avoids a situation where an NCMP seat is left vacant for whatever reasons at the will of the ruling party. The second prevents a situation where an opposition party can act anti-democratically by thwarting the expressed political choice of the electorate.

There is a tendency to overlook the democratic element that underpins the NCMP scheme. The Parliamentary Elections Act provides that the NCMP seats are to be filled on the basis of the percentage of the votes polled in a general election (the so-called “best losers” requirement). Clearly, the voters’ preference is determinative with regards to the filling of NCMP seats.

Opposition parties should not be allowed to go against the choice of voters in filling NCMP seats because that is tantamount to letting a party, rather than the voters, decide on the NCMPs. This enables an opposition party to place a NCMP out of self-interest rather than respecting the expressed will of the voters, contrary to what the Constitution requires.

This was the essence of PAP’s amendment of WP’s parliamentary motion for Associate Professor Daniel Goh to fill Ms Lee’s vacated NCMP seat at last Friday’s debate.

In a tactically shrewd move — cognisant of public sentiment supporting Parliament having its full complement of three NCMP seats — the PAP took advantage of its numerical dominance in Parliament to amend the WP motion to reflect the point that the WP was making a “political manoeuvre” to take full advantage of the NCMP scheme, even as WP secretary-general Low Thia Khiang had been dismissive of the scheme.

In so doing, the PAP also sought to establish it was acting from a principled stance in which the WP should not ride roughshod over the preference of Punggol East voters.

It is worth recalling that in the September 2015 GE, 48.23 per cent of voters in Punggol East voted for then-incumbent Ms Lee, while only 39.27 per cent of East Coast GRC voters supported the WP team there, which included Dr Goh and three candidates.

To the extent that the NCMP derives its currency from seeking to maintain Parliament’s relevance in a one-party dominant system, it is clear that the NCMP has benefited both the PAP and the WP.

For the PAP, having a nominal, if not minimum, representation of opposition parliamentarians helps ensure that Parliament is more representative than it otherwise would be, and is better able to act as a check and balance in our constitutional system of government.

Most significantly, the NCMP scheme also helps assure the Singaporean electorate that it should not be overly concerned with Parliament being dominated by the PAP, since there will be a guaranteed minimum number of non-PAP MPs.

For all intents and purposes, the WP has benefited from strategically utilising the NCMP scheme even as Mr Low derisively described NCMPs as rootless “duckweed on the water of a pond”. Its official stance — faithfully and consistently reflected in the party’s election manifestos — is that it is opposed to the scheme and would abolish the scheme if it were the Government. The WP’s premise is that elections should not dilute the individual voter’s voice and should therefore only be run on single member seats, with individual MPs fully accountable to constituents.

However, in reality, the WP adopts a different reasoning when it says that it would accept an eligible WP candidate’s decision to take up a NCMP seat so as to contribute to parliamentary debates and because “the struggle for a functional democracy … must be fought from within the existing system”.

The scheme has enabled the WP to profile itself and its NCMPs while also providing more opportunities toraise parliamentary questions, debate Bills, file motions and speak on PAP motions.

Besides M P D Nair and Ms Lee, WP losing candidates in the past have accepted NCMP seats: Lee Siew Choh (1989-1991), JB Jeyaretnam (1997-2001), Ms Sylvia Lim (2006-2011), Mr Yee Jen Jong and Mr Gerald Giam (2011-2015), and their current three NCMPs.

There needs, in my view, to be greater clarity and consistency in the WP’s position on the NCMP scheme. In light of the Government’s proposal to increase the number of NCMPs (from nine to 12) and for them to have the same voting rights as elected MPs, the WP should not permit its members to accept NCMP seats when offered in future. Given the WP’s severe criticisms of the scheme, surely it cannot have its cake and eat it, too.

This will raise the stakes for voters in constituencies where the WP’s best candidates are contesting. It will also make the WP’s objection to the NCMP scheme principled and not self-serving. The artificial distinction between the party’s vehement objection to and an individual WP member’s inclination to take up an NCMP seat is an untenable proposition going forward.

By:

Eugene K B Tan is associate professor of law at the School of Law, Singapore Management University, and a former Nominated Member of Parliament.