Elected President – Minorities need a lift?

The Constitution Commission must be deliberating on the numerous wise cracks submitted for consideration. Dudley Au, the grand old man, wrote to the ST forum and this is his opening paragraph. ‘I read with amusement the suggestion that we simultaneously have two presidents of Singapore, with one representing a minority group.’ I too laughed until I almost fell off my chair. Just imagine if this idea was put forth by someone from the opposition party camp, I can’t imagine what kind of comments would be printed in the media.  The media would have a field day writing about the ridiculous nature of the proposition. Dudley Au was just too polite, so I also better be polite. No comment is the best option.

Dudley brought up the case of Barack Obama being elected as the President of USA, a highly racist country, and also the newly appointed mayor of London in Sadiq Khan, a Muslim. Wow, in the thick of Islamophobia in the city of London, a Muslim was elected to be the mayor in a society hostile to Muslims in the face of terrorist acts committed by Muslim radicals.  How could these two be elected without the assistance of affirmative actions? Impossible, unimaginable, not in Singapore. We need affirmative actions, we need the protection of the Constitution to make these happened.

And we have our recent Bukit Batok by election to prove that a minority candidate, not the best, could beat the best opposition candidate squarely, without any crutches and special advantage. How’s that?

So, do we really need to have special provisions in the Constitution to ensure that minorities are represented in the Elected Presidency? If one is to look at the track record of the Presidency, the minorities are over represented in tenure in the last few decades.

So, what is the fuss about the need to protect minority representation in the Elected Presidency?  Another red herring, another wild goose chase? When the premises for this exercise are so flimsy, it is not unexpected to get flimsy and crazy ideas, even bizarre ideas.  Two presidents at the same time!  So much money to throw meh? Do we need to build another Istana?  Or would each president be getting half of the nearly $4m annual salary plus bonuses that could come to another $4m to make it a cool $8m each annually?

If money is not a problem, allow me to offer another silly idea. How about having 4 presidents at one time so that all CMIO would be represented? And if the new citizens would also want to be represented, make it 10 presidents sitting in the Istana at one time to please all and sundry. Only $40m plus plus, at most $80m a year. Sup sup suey. We got so much money to throw to make every minority happy, old minorities and new minorities.

Seriously, do we need to continue with this exercise? If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. What’s the hurry, what is so urgent, so paramount to have this Elected Presidency fixed?

In my blog, the quality of a blogger, commentator, is not in his rank or richness, but in the quality of the post. A stupid post is a stupid post. A silly post is a silly post. A silly idea is a silly idea. No one can pull rank to win an argument or to look clever or sound clever.