This is because the presidential election, due in August 2017, will be reserved for candidates from the Malay community, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told Parliament today.
Lee said: “That means if a qualified Malay candidate steps up to run, Singapore will have a Malay president again… this would be our first after more than 46 years, since our first president Yusof Ishak.”
Through this arrangement, Lee noted, one in three presidents would be non-Chinese over six terms – larger than the proportion of non-Chinese in the population, according to a report in Today Online.
Noting that there were some who felt this mechanism went against meritocracy, Lee said that candidates in a reserved election would still have to meet the same qualifying criteria.
One of the proposed changes to the elected presidency being debated in Parliament this week is that elections should be reserved for a particular racial group if no one from that group has been president for five continuous terms.
It is meant to ensure that minority presidents are elected from time to time, according to a report in The Straits Times.
Lee said the government would start counting the five continuous terms from the term of president Wee Kim Wee, who was the first president to be vested with the powers of the elected president. Wee was in office when the elected presidency came into effect in 1991.
Since then, there have been five presidential terms with elected presidents in office: Wee, Ong Teng Cheong, S R Nathan who was in the office for two terms, and the current term of President Tony Tan Keng Yam.
This means there has been no Malay president for five continuous terms.
Hence the provision to reserve an election for candidates from the Malay community would begin from the next presidential election, due next year, said the ST report.
“Every citizen, Chinese, Malay, Indian, or some other race, should know that someone of his community can become president, and in fact from time to time, does become president,” the ST quoted Lee as saying.
Saying racial harmony was important, Lee added it could be affected by developments in other countries, citing as examples the rise of China, the issue of race and religion for Singapore’s closest neighbours, as well as the threat of a terror attack here.
Surveys also show at least a significant minority of Singaporeans consider race as a factor when they vote, which means minority candidates are at a disadvantage in an election, the ST report said.
Today Online quoted Lee as saying: “We must always remember that we are not a Chinese country, but a multi-racial, multi-religious Southeast Asian nation with an ethnic Chinese majority but not a Chinese country.
We have to show this domestically, to our own population, Chinese population, as well as the non-Chinese population and we have to show this externally, to other countries too.”
However, Lee stressed, while practical arrangements must be made to strengthen Singapore’s multiracial system, Singapore’s ideal was to be race-blind.