In the final part of an interview about race and politics broadcast on Channel NewsAsia on Sunday (Sep 4), Mr Lee tackled several tough questions. Among them: Why not just revert to the old system of appointing Presidents to ensure minorities held the office? And whether it would be difficult to convince the electorate of the need for these proposed changes?
Q: Why stick to an elected presidency if we’re so concerned about minority representation? Why not just revert to a system of appointing a President?
PM Lee: Some of the people who appeared before the commission actually made that argument, to say: “Go back, just appoint the President and then you can be confident that you can get minorities in and you can have this racial aspects seen to”.
The difficulty is this, the President has got these two roles: One, he’s representing the nation; Two, he’s got powers.
To represent the nation, you must have multiracial representation. To have powers, you must have a mandate because if you don’t have a mandate, if you have not been elected and your powers are to say no to the Government and the Government comes to you and says I want to spend S$10 billion … for so many good things, and you have to say no to the Prime Minister, the Government will retort: “Who are you to say no to me? I have a mandate, I went to election, I published a manifesto and now you’re saying I can’t spend this money”. So I think that will put the President in a very difficult position.
As long as there’s no such situation, it’s fine. If you actually have to wield those powers and say no, I think it will not work. So if you want to have a safeguard, then you must have an election.
Now, there are some people who say we don’t need a safeguard, Parliament is supreme, Parliament is sovereign, people have voted for Parliament, Parliament will decide everything. You can do that. We did that for quite a long time until we made the Elected President but if you look at the way most governments work, they don’t work like that. They always have some other element. It may be an Upper House, it may be a President who is separately elected with considerable powers. And they divide the powers up – you have a balancing system to stabilise the political system to make sure that you don’t have one mishap and the whole boat flips over.
And I think that for the long term, we need these stabilisers in our system which is why we created the Elected President.
So, between having an Elected President and having to deal with the difficulties of how to elect presidents of different races, how to make sure that the elections are run properly and you don’t go and be chasing after things which are not the President’s duties and functions, and having no election and no powers, I think we take the difficulties of electing a President and we find ways to overcome those difficulties. Because I think without safety nets, without that safeguard, I believe we would have run into difficulty already.
You look at countries like Australia, (which is) much more established than ours. When they were having the commodities boom … iron, coal, gas, everything was high, revenues were flowing in, elections became auctions and the opposition trying to come in would say: “If I get elected, I will give you the following.” And you have healthcare, pensions, you have school fees and all the rest of the good things. And the Government in position is under pressure to say, “I will do as good and even better”. So, the elections became auctions on both sides, successive elections because they have one every 3 years. Now the problem has gone away because now the commodities boom is over and their budget is in deficit, there’s nothing to give away.
We have been accumulating reserves over many, many years now, and I believe over the last 25 years if we had not had this Elected President, we would have been pushed towards auctions. But it hasn’t happened because even the opposition knows that if they come in and they want to spend the money, they have to persuade the President and the President can say no, which may well be one of the reasons why the opposition says do away with the powers and the safeguard.
But I think for Singapore’s … well-being, we should keep that safeguard.
Q: Looking at the qualifying criteria for private sector candidates, they need experience of running a large organisation with a paid up capital of S$100 million. That is going to be revised, but what will it be increased to?
PM Lee: The commission has recommended a number. You’ll see it when the report is published, but it has to be revised up substantially. It has to be revised up because at the time when we set this, S$100 million was a significant threshold and there were probably 150, certainly less than 200 companies then in around 1990 which would be in that category. And so you are talking about times two or three persons in each company who have been CEO or chairman and qualify – a few hundred people.
But today, there are 2,000 companies which are S$100 million and above. And so at face value, I should have five or six thousand people who are qualified and capable of being President. But I don’t believe all five or six thousand of them actually have the experience and the relevant competence in their work in order to do the president’s job.
And so we have to bring it up to something which is realistic, which is not overly constraining so you don’t have enough candidates, but at the same time, which sets the benchmark which … gives you some sense at least of the decisions which you have to make as a President, which are very big and important decisions. And I think that’s something which can be done. It is a matter of judgement, but the commission has made the recommendation and you’ll see it soon.
Q: How often will we be looking at a review of the criteria?
PM Lee: I think you shouldn’t wait another 25 years. If you look at the size of the economy, at least in nominal terms over at least 25 years, it’s gone up seven times. We are now S$400 billion GDP. We used to be S$60 billion 25 years ago. If you look at our reserves in MAS, if you look at our net worth of Temasek, if you look at how much money there is in the CPF, which has to be protected, they’ve also gone up about 7 times.
But S$100 million is still S$100 million and what has happened is that now, (there are) 10 times as many S$100-million companies. So there are 10 times as many people qualified nominally to look after seven times as much assets which I find very difficult to believe. So it has to be revised.
I think that we should revise it regularly and we should not have to make big revisions each time. So we should find some way to do this regularly. Every term is probably too often but I think every two terms, to look at it, and to make an adjustment to bring it up, bring it up for inflation, bring it up for the size of the economy, I think that would be reasonable.
On the public sector side, it’s more or less self-adjusting because if you’re a Minister of Finance, as the economy grows, your job grows with it. Or if you are a Chief Justice, similarly, as the case load grows, bigger economy, more business, so too your duties and responsibilities. But in the private sector it is not self-adjusting and it needs to be regularly brought up to date.
Q: There’s some scepticism out there that the changes to the qualifying criteria of private sector candidates are meant to bar certain individuals, specific individuals who might be not so friendly about Government policy, from standing in the election. What would you say to that?
PM Lee: I would say two things. One, problems with individuals we can possibly have, but individuals grow old, individuals come and go. We are looking at changes which are for the long term. These are changes which we are talking about for 30, 40, 50 years. How am I going to make sure I’ve got capable people to be the President and how am I going to make sure that I have multiracial representation in the presidency over the long term? That’s the first answer.
I think the second answer, it may surprise you, and that is that even if I raise the standards, I cannot guarantee that nobody who is going to be difficult will become President. It is not possible because … wherever you cut off, there will be somebody, even a former minister or a former judge or somebody who may have run a very big company may have his views and may clash with the Government. And it could be populist, it could be a matter of principle, but it can happen.
So I think what we need to know is that we must try our best to design our system so that it works with a best chance of success, and yet also know that however hard you design the system, no system will guarantee that it will sure work and it can go wrong, it may go wrong at some point and not to go wrong, how do you do that?
You need to have good people, honourable, capable, committed in politics, standing in public office. It’s not a guarantee but it’s the ideal we have to aim for.
Q: How concerned are you that Singaporeans may end up treating the elections for President as a by-election? They have a PAP Government in power, they want somebody who’s a non-establishment candidate who can be a check and balance on the Government without totally understanding what the presidency means and his powers in the Constitution.
PM Lee: It could happen. That’s one of the difficulties of having an election because in an election, whatever the formal purpose of the election is, the informal agenda, because of the background issues or the sentiments which are brewing in the population at that time, can have an influence on the election.
You can have different ways of trying to mitigate this in the way the election is conducted or in what the candidates have to declare that they know what the purpose of this is. Basically if you become President you must swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and what the Constitution says. And so you can mitigate it but you cannot entirely remove that.
But even if I have a General Election, I can’t entirely remove that because people may vote against their Government because they are angry with it. It may be a good reason, it may or may not be a good reason. It can happen that things are decided not for the reason which is on the face of it.
You look at the Brexit, the British referendum on leaving the EU. On the face of it, you were supposed to vote up or down on a certain package which David Cameron had negotiated to improve the terms for Britain in the EU. Actually, nobody in the referendum paid two cents of attention to that package at all or even talked about it. What was it about? It was anger, dissatisfaction with Brussels, really dissatisfaction with immigration, unhappiness with the governing establishment class and so it all boiled up, not in an overwhelming vote against the EU but in a 51.5 per cent vote against the EU. But enough to change the course and the fate of the country.
So it can happen in Singapore. There’s no guarantee that we are immune from all these pressures or from all these sentiments. It can happen. We have to know that.
Q: How difficult do you think it will be to convince the electorate, the public at large that these changes are really necessary now?
PM Lee: I think it is difficult because it’s a combination of different factors. First, it’s legally difficult to craft the provisions. I mean, they are very complicated and to understand all the fine print takes a lot of effort. Secondly, it’s politically delicate to explain because it has to be put across. People must understand what the purpose is; people must not feel patronised. They must not feel that you have some ulterior motive and you’ve got to put across honestly why you are doing this and how this is supposed to work and why it’s good for them.
But thirdly, there’s also a psychological level to this, which is that it is psychologically hard … It takes time for people to accept because it’s a different idea. It’s something which we have not had before, particularly the requirement or the arrangements for minorities to become President. And it takes time for people to understand why it’s necessary and to see that it’s necessary.
It’s not yet obvious, but by the time it’s obvious, it’s too late. I mean, you take the example of GRCs. When we first floated the idea, back in the 1980s, there was considerable doubt and resistance. Why do you need this? I don’t need this. We can get elected on our own. This is patronising, this is undemocratic. But now, after nearly 30 years of GRCs, I think it has become a very valuable stabiliser in our system. People accept it, that it ensures that we always have minority MPs in Parliament.
You will always have politics being pushed towards multiracial politics because you have to field a team. You can’t just be a Chinese party, or Malay party or an Indian party … I mean, you have a Malay member, you must make sure that you have policies which will also meet the needs of the Malays but at the same time, look after the Chinese and the Indians.
So, it’s become a stabiliser and a valuable part of our system and I think in the same way if we do that for the presidency, in time it will be seen as an important stabiliser in our system, which so far has been missing.
Q: Do you think if we were to do away with the GRC system today that the politics would shift completely?
PM Lee: I think in terms of election outcomes, you will probably already see some difference immediately in the next election because if we don’t have GRCs, I think you may well end up with minority MPs being targeted and you will have fewer minority MPs in Parliament. And if in the next election you have significantly fewer minority MPs in Parliament, I believe there will immediately be a reaction from the Malays and the Indians in Singapore. Doesn’t have to go to zero. So that’s one element of it.
The longer-term element of it is, if you don’t have that requirement to cater to all the races, and the parties start playing chauvinist lines, I think that’s very troublesome. Minority chauvinism, you can say “Well they can’t win because you don’t have enough numbers”, but Chinese chauvinism, you could win and that can be very, very troublesome for Singapore.
Q: Who would be the ideal candidate for you for the next Elected President?
PM Lee: Somebody who can identify with all Singaporeans, whom all Singaporeans will look up to, respect, and at the same time, have the experience and the weight and the judgement to look at what the Government is putting up to them, and to say yes, or no, depending on whether or not it is the wise thing to do. You need the experience, you need the personality.
You also need that trust which people must build up in you, so when you say, I have made this decision after consulting my conscience and consulting wise people, it carries weight and people respect you and they feel proud to be Singaporean. That’s what we want.
Source: ChannelNewsAsia
