Talk:Powers of the president of Singapore

Elected president and presidential powers
I had to disagree with some of the things stated in the article.

"'In 1991 the Constitution of Singapore was amended to transform the office of President, which was previously wholly ceremonial in nature, into an elected office. '"

Firstly, the President has always been elected. The constitutional amendment changed the President from being elected by the Parliament to being directly elected by the people. Secondly, a President can be both an elected and a ceremonial head of state. For example, the President of Ireland is directly elected by the people, but plays a largely ceremonial role.

"'This altered the traditional Westminster system of government model that Singapore possessed into a hybrid Parliamentary and Presidential system.'"

The hybrid, usually referred to as the semi-presidential system, is not the case in Singapore. In a semi-presidential system, there is a division of power between the President (head of state) and the Prime Minister (head of government). In Singapore, the day-to-day administration is carried out by the government led by the Prime Minister. The discretionary powers of the President are mainly to review and approve certain actions initiated by the government. In other words, the President does not initiate actions on his own. For example, the DYK entry is incorrect in the sense that it suggests the President initiated the action to tap on the financial reserves; rather, he approved the request of the government to tap on the financial reserves, which he could choose not to grant the approval.

In short, although being popularly elected, the President still plays a largely ceremonial role and does not actively participate in the governance of the country. Being popularly elected doesn't mean that the President can play an active role in the government. Rather, he is bound by convention to not to. The constitutional amendments do not grant the President the power to initiate governmental actions; they only granted the President the power to withhold approval for certain actions of the government. -- Joshua Say "hi" to me!What I've done? 07:24, 30 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the interesting comments. I think you are right. Looking at Article 17(1) of the 1980 Reprint of the Constitution, I note that it states: "There shall be a President of Singapore, who shall be elected by Parliament." And I also agree that it is not very apt to describe the present system as a hybrid Presidential and Parliamentary system, as this supposes that the President exercises actual executive powers (though the students who worked on this article as part of a school assignment cannot really be faulted as this was the way it was expressed in the reference: Wan (1994)). I'm going to be away from my computer for a few hours, so feel free to update the article. Otherwise I will get to this in a few hours. — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:29, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, have made some changes. See if you agree with them. — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:24, 30 July 2010 (UTC)