Panel dismisses suggestions to hold run-off elections
SINGAPORE – There is no need for multiple rounds of voting to strengthen an Elected President’s mandate, as the President’s legitimacy is not determined by whether he secures an absolute majority of the electorate, said the Constitutional Commission, in response to suggestions for run-off voting.
The President’s legitimacy comes from the fact that he was elected in a “free, open and fair” process. Run-off elections would not only be unnecessarily complex, but would also extend the avenue of politicising the process, putting racial consideration in “sharper relief” as a result of having a longer electoral process.
In its report on the Elected Presidency issued yesterday, the commission noted that some contributors have suggested that the President cannot be said to secure a “sufficient mandate” if his margin of victory was small, or if he failed to secure more than 50 per cent of the vote cast in the Presidential Election.
One contributor suggested that having multiple competing candidates in the Presidential Election could result in the votes being spread out more evenly among them, leading to a candidate elected despite having secured less than 50 per cent of the vote cast.
For example, during the last Presidential Election in 2011, Dr Tan Cheng Bock received 34.85 per cent of the vote share, or 738, 311 votes in the four-way contest. He lost by 7,382 votes to Dr Tony Tan, who received 35.2 per cent of the votes.
The commission, which listed its reasons for rejecting run-off voting, said the President’s legitimacy comes from an electoral process where he must have garnered the “largest share of votes at a nation-wide election”. It noted that insistence on an absolute majority or a majority greater than that enjoyed by the Government in Parliamentary elections is “simply not warranted”.
A run-off election system, requiring voters to participate in a second round of voting, is also “likely to be unnecessarily complex and cumbersome”, said the commission.
It also “significantly increases” the time taken for the election process to come to an end, increasing the avenues of politicisation of the election process, and exacerbating difficulties from the need of choosing a non-partisan President through an intensely political process.
This would also worsen the difficulties that candidates from racial minority groups might face when running for Elected President.
“If the system culminates in a run-off election where there is a direct contest between a candidate from the majority ethnic group and one from a minority ethnic group, racial considerations may be brought into sharper relief and may have a much more palpable impact on the outcome of the election,” said the commission.
As these concerns are not outweighed by “any clear or principled benefit” of having run-off elections, the commission concluded that there is nothing to suggest that the electoral system in Singapore is any weaker as a result of it.
