Chief Justice leads five-member team to hear Tan Cheng Bock’s appeal against reserved Presidential Election

SINGAPORE — Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon will be among the five judges presiding over the appeal by former presidential hopeful Tan Cheng Bock against the basis and timing of the coming reserved Presidential Election.

This was revealed on Facebook on Thursday (July 27) by Dr Tan, who also welcomed CJ Menon's involvement in the hearing despite the fact that he had chaired the Constitutional Commission tasked to review the Elected Presidency.

The commission had recommended the hiatus-triggered model that paved the way for the reserved election to be held in September.

Dr Tan said the other four judges are Judges of Appeal Judith Prakash and Steven Chong, as well as Justices Chua Lee Ming and Kannan Ramesh.

The case will be heard in the Court of Appeal on Monday, July 31.

“Having five judges (instead of the usual three) is significant. It points to the importance of the Constitutional issues for clarification,” said Dr Tan, who is a former Member of Parliament from the People’s Action Party. He narrowly lost the 2011 election to Dr Tony Tan, the current President.

Noting how some have questioned whether CJ Menon should hear the case, Dr Tan said both the Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) and his lawyers had no objections when consulted.

“I welcome CJ's involvement. In my view, no other judge knows more about the subject than the CJ,” he said. “It is therefore proper and beneficial to Singaporeans that he is available to address questions on the reserved election scheme and its spirit and purpose.”

After his legal challenge was dismissed on July 7, Dr Tan said his lawyers have advised “the judge may have misconstrued the relevant constitutional provisions”, and proceeded to file an appeal to the apex court.

Dr Tan had earlier challenged the AGC’s findings that Dr Wee was Singapore’s first elected President, which formed the basis for the Government to trigger a reserved election for Malay candidates for the coming polls in September.

After changes to the Elected Presidency scheme were passed, a reserved election will be triggered for a particular race that has not seen an elected representative for five consecutive terms.

The Government, on the advice of AGC, started counting the five terms from Dr Wee’s presidency. The late Dr Wee was the first President to exercise powers under the EP scheme, after it was introduced in 1991 while he was in office.

But Dr Tan said it was unconstitutional to start counting from Dr Wee’s term, and the Government should have started counting from the popularly-elected Mr Ong Teng Cheong instead, who succeeded Dr Wee. This would make it four terms since the Republic has had an elected Malay President.

Earlier this month, Justice Quentin Loh dismissed the appeal. He ruled that after amendments to the EP scheme were passed, Parliament was “entitled… to specify President Wee’s last term in office as the first term” of office of the President to be counted under the relevant article for a reserved election.

The judge found that, “on a plain reading” of Article 164, Parliament is not limited to choosing a particular term of office of the President as the “first term”.

There was also nothing in the text or textual context of Article 19B that limits Parliament’s power by requiring it to start the count from the term of office of a popularly-elected President, added Justice Loh.