SINGAPORE: After Workers’ Party (WP) chief Pritam Singh was removed as Leader of the Opposition, some in Singapore have wondered if the role should be institutionalised, just as it is in other countries with a similar form of government.
For example, on Jan 16, former Straits Times editor Leslie Fong quoted a comment on Mr Singh’s removal from the position from a Mr Freddy Neo in a Facebook post that has since been widely shared and commented on.
Mr Fong, however, started his post with a clarification that he found the comment to be instructive.
“I have no party affiliation. Just a belief that facts matter,” he added.
Mr Neo had pointed out that in the Westminster system, upon which the Singapore government is modelled heavily, the Leader of the Opposition is not appointed but is a matter of “parliamentary arithmetic.”
“It is not an executive appointment, and it is certainly not a discretionary favour. The core principle is clear and consistent across the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand: The Leader of the Opposition emerges automatically from Parliament, by convention or by law. The leader of the largest opposition party becomes the Leader of the Opposition as a matter of course,” Mr Neo commented.
He added that, therefore, “there is no executive gatekeeping,” with “nothing to ‘retain’ or ‘withdraw.’”
Mr Neo also pointed out that while House Leader Indranee Rajah, who had filed the motion for Mr Singh to be deemed unfit for the position, had spoken about how allowing him to stay in the position would compromise governance, “This argument collapses once we examine the process by which the Leader of the Opposition is constituted in the first place.”
He also noted how the role actually serves to guard Parliament’s dignity, autonomy, and credibility, and that the legitimacy of the opposition comes from the voters’ mandate.
“Seen in this light, invoking ‘integrity’ to justify executive control over the Leader of the Opposition inverts the Westminster logic entirely. The integrity problem does not arise from who occupies the role, but from a system in which the Prime Minister can appoint — and potentially remove — the very person meant to hold the government to account,” he added.
In the same vein, former nominated MP Zulkifli Baharudin told the South China Morning Post, “It’s like having the captain of one team choose the captain for the other team.”
Mr Singh is the first person appointed as Leader of the Opposition after the WP won an unprecedented 10 seats in Parliament and a second GRC in the General Election in 2020. His predecessor, Low Thia Khiang, had served as de facto Leader of the Opposition from 2006 to 2018.
On Jan 14, however, Parliament passed a motion deeming him unsuitable as Leader of the Opposition in the wake of the High Court upholding the Feb 17 verdict finding the WP chief guilty of two counts of lying to a parliamentary committee.
On the following day, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced that Mr Singh’s designation would cease with immediate effect. He wrote a letter to the party’s Central Executive Committee, which passed the decision to the WP as to who would fill the role. /TISG
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