In politics, the only consistent principle appears to be gaining power and retaining it. And that comes through clearly in the book, Non-Constituency Members of Parliament – What’s next for the scheme? It is a compilation of essays and interviews with people, especially those who have a vested interest in partisan politics.
History has a way of being shaded by the people who talk about the past. Was the 40-year old NCMP scheme really conceived as a stabilising safety-valve to prevent sudden shocks to the political system as former PM Goh Chok Tong argued during GE2020? Or was it means to persuade voters not to think too hard about who to vote for since opposition voices have been guaranteed.
I doubt that the late Lee Kuan Yew was concerned about having a Parliament with diverse voices when he mooted the NCMP scheme. It was more about having a fail-safe way of showing voters how silly they were to think the Opposition could do better.
Parts of his speech were incorporated at front of the book. So you can make your own judgment of the rationale for this scheme. Or look up Hansard.
The pros and cons of the scheme were debated in the book but they were focused on the rather narrow issue of whether the PAP or the Opposition gained more from its existence in terms of the number of seats won at election time.
NCMPs, past and present, said the scheme was not something that exercised the minds of voters at the ballot box even though debate on the issue takes up a lot of media space whenever it is raised. To most people, a member of the Opposition in Parliament is merely that, whether elected or not. And now with voting rights for NCMPs, even that difference has been erased.
While they lamented that they lacked the grassroots network that elected MPs have to get in the votes, they also say that except for WP’s Sylvia Lim, none of the past NCMPs got elected in the constituency that they had originally worked in.
Changes to electoral boundaries put paid to that, I agree, although I would think the political party leaders also had a part to play in moving the chess pieces around. In any case, we shouldn’t discount how a raised national profile is to the NCMPs’ advantage.
Of course, none came out in the open to say that NCMPs were second class MPs who got into the House by the backdoor. In fact, records show that they consistently among the hardest working MPs in Parliament. Professor Walter Woon, who contributed a chapter, was at pains to stress the legitimacy of the scheme which is usually attacked for not representing the people’s decision. He noted that the first-past-the-post electoral system does not translate votes into parliamentary seats, leaving swathes of voters unrepresented. While elected MPs past and present have managed to clear the 50 per cent majority gate in the constituencies they contested , it should not be expected that this will always be the case. If or when this happens, it means that the majority of voters did not elect the MP purportedly representing the constituency in Parliament. The 2011 Presidential election was a “cautionary tale”, he said. Then, president Tony Tan was elected with 35.2 per cent of the vote, with the rest split among the three Tans – and not a majority.
The book, edited by author Loke Hoe Yong (I am not sure if he is still with the Singapore People’s Party) and Yee Jenn Jong (a former WP NCMP) is a great refresher for followers of Singapore politics. I had forgotten, for example, that NCMPs used to have money for legislative assistants but this was taken away in 1997 just before the late J B Jeyaretnam took the role.
I had also forgotten about the aftermath of the GE2015 when WP’s Lee Li Lian, who contested in an SMC, declined the NCMP post and how the WP got Daniel Goh, from another GRC, take the job. Or how, after the 2011 GE, WP’s Eric Low quit because he was so angry that the party denied him the NCMP role he said had been promised. The party plumbed for Gerald Giam.
The NCMP scheme is like a coconut. What you like about it depends on which part you want to use or eat. But people can also do without eating or using coconuts.
(This was my first column. It was referred to in the book as well https://sg.news.yahoo.com/comment-the-ncmp-scheme-is-good-for-who-exactly-010203716.html )
It has been amended twice to accommodate more NCMPs from the original six to the current 12, and to give them voting powers. But no one besides the indefatigable Eugene Tan questions this upper limit and how the rules seem to be applied arbitrarily – if they are there at all. Like deciding who gets the vacancy in a GRC, what happens to an NCMP seat that was suddenly vacated and “intra-party’’ transfers. No one thought that the 15 per cent threshold of votes was too low to apply to someone who enters Parliament?
There was a tendency, he said, to “overlook the democratic element’’ underpinning the scheme. I agree. We look at the utility of the scheme for the different actors rather than whether it fully represents the wishes of the electorate as conceived, or at least the wishes of voters who picked the best losing candidate.
His interview was the most interesting because he looked at the scheme more detachedly.
He was against giving the NCMPs voting rights on constitutional amendments because it “compromises the sanctity of the Constitution’’.
He also suggested a “sunset clause’’ which would kill off the NCMP scheme if a certain proportion of opposition members (he recommends one-third) are elected. I think it is a good idea. People, including me, have said that the NCMP scheme would die a natural death if more than 12 Opposition MPs were elected. If so, it should have died some time ago when the number was stuck at six. Not, forever, if the ceiling keeps going up.
The editors of the book want the scheme abolished stating that it had outlived its time and the goal should be a level playing field for all political party. The Progress Singapore Party went hammer and tongs about how a proportional representation system would be a better replacement. SDP’s Paul Tambyah describes the scheme as Panadol for a patient whose doctor refuses to prescribe much needed antibiotics. But it was “better than nothing’’, he said.
I wish there was a more academic examination of the system and its evolution put in the context of the circumstances of the time. As it is, it is a patchwork of information and views. There is a chapter on Views from the PAP but it comprises only a repeat of Goh Chok Tong’s Facebook post in 2020 and an interview with former PAP MP Inderjit Singh.
The front of the book has accolades from luminaries in Singapore. I join the chorus in applauding the existence of the book given the paltry amount of political analysis we have these days.
I thank the authors and contributors for trying to plug the gaps in the people’s knowledge of the way Singapore politics works – even as we can’t agree on why it is this way.
Bertha Harian 