Singapore
Court of Appeal says PM must call for a by-election 'within a
reasonable time'
Vellama Marie
Muthu and her lawyer M Ravi asked the court to declare if the Prime
Minister has the option to decide on the by-election and when it is
held. (Yahoo! photo/Andrew Loh)
UPDATED (945pm 5 July 2013. Adding the statement of the Attorney
General's Chambers)
The Court of Appeal said on Friday that Singapore's constitution
does not give the prime minister unfettered discretion in calling
for an election to fill a vacated seat of an elected Member of
Parliament.
The court's three-judge panel said this in a 57-page document in
which, at the same time, it dismissed the appeal of Hougang
resident Vellama Marie Muthu against a High Court ruling last year
that the prime minister does have the discretion.
In its judgment, the CA, said: "Art. 49 does not give the Prime
Minister an unfettered discretion in the calling of an election to
fill a casual vacancy of an elected MP. He must do so within a
reasonable time and in that regard, the Prime Minister is entitled
to take into account all relevant circumstances and only in clear
cases can there be judicial intervention."
In reaction, the Attorney General's Chambers said in a statement
that it was studying the judgment carefully and would advise the
prime minister in "due course".
The AGC also pointed out that the apex court said that the prime
minister is entitled to take into account all relevant
circumstances in deciding what is a reasonable time, and that his
discretion can only be challenged in exceptional
cases.
In a statement about the judgment, Vellama's lawyer, M Ravi, said,
"It is a great day for democracy in Singapore."
He noted that it "may be the first time the Singapore Courts have
acted to interpret the Constitution in a way that has circumscribed
the Prime Minister’s executive authority."
In reaction to Ravi's statement, an AGC spokesperson pointed out
that the executive branch "does not have any authority independent
of the Constitution or legislation" based on Singapore's
system of government.
In February last year, the seat for Hougang SMC was vacated after
its elected MP, the Workers' Party's Yaw Shin Leong, was dismissed
after not coming clean to party leaders about his personal
affairs.
After Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he
would consider whether or not to hold a by-election,
given that there was no
fixed time within which he needed to do so,
the 43-year-old part-time cleaner went to court to file an
application for a declaration that his views were contrary to the
Constitution, and to the interests of residents in
Hougang.
Last August, High Court Justice Philip Pillai dismissed her case,
which hinged upon a clause in Article 49 of the Constitution that
requires that vacancies created in constituencies "shall be filled
by election".
Justice Pillai decided that the key term in the clause was
"election", which means that the seat is filled by means of an
election and not in any other way.
The Court of Appeal, however, said in its written judgment on
Friday that the key lay in the word "shall", which indicates that a
by-election must be held to fill the vacant parliamentary
seat.
Following a 1965 parliamentary debate on the issue, a further
clause requiring a by-election to be called within three months was
deleted from the constitution -- a move that guided Justice
Pillai's decision last year.
Despite this, the Court of Appeal wrote that "the absence of the
time-limit clause cannot lead to the conclusion that the Prime
Minister is completely free to do as he pleases, even to the extent
of delaying infinitely the calling of a by-election or even
declaring that he will not fill the casual
vacancy".
They did, however, agree that there is "no pre-determined time
frame" for him to call a by-election, albeit noting that a seat
that is left vacant for an "unnecessarily prolonged period" runs
the risk of the residents in that constituency being under-served,
due to there not being representation for their interests over that
period.
Vellama's appeal was dismissed because, among other procedural
grounds, she did not have standing to push her case forward after
the Hougang by-election was called and held last May, added the
CA.