PARLIAMENT on Wednesday (Jul 5) rejected a motion by the Progress Singapore Party (PSP) to abolish the group representation constituency (GRC) system.

Setting out why the People’s Action Party (PAP) opposed the motion, Education Minister Chan Chun Sing said supporting it would risk having no or inadequate multiracial representation in Parliament, and go against the founding philosophy of ensuring the interests of minority communities are accounted for.

“To support this motion is to leave to chance the emergence of racial politics and forgo our continued progress towards a system where race is not to be a determining factor in electoral contests,” said Chan, who is also Minister-in-charge of the Public Service.

PSP Non-Constituency MP (NCMP) Hazel Poa had called for GRCs to be abolished in her private member’s motion, saying that numerous changes to the system over the years have resulted in suboptimal outcomes as weaker candidates can ride on the coattails of more established teammates, and reduced voters’ influence over election results.

The GRC system was implemented in 1988 to enshrine minority representation in Parliament. Under the scheme, each slate of election candidates for a GRC must have one or more candidates who are non-Chinese.

Poa proposed two alternatives to GRCs. First, a scheme that will allow minority candidates with the highest percentage of votes who were not elected, to be appointed as NCMPs in the event that under-representation occurs.

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Her other suggestion was to adopt some form of proportional representation, and stipulate a multiracial slate for single-seat contests and a multiracial party list.

Responding, Chan said he did not think the NCMP scheme for minorities would achieve the objectives of ensuring Parliament is multiracial and minimise the chances of election candidates and parties playing the race card.

He noted that in an electoral system with only single seats, there is no guarantee there will be enough minority candidates among the losing candidates.

And as the NCMP scheme comes into play when the ruling party has a large majority in Parliament, Poa’s suggestion would mean it kicks in when there is a predominantly Chinese party in power with minority MPs in opposition or as NCMPs, he said. The political divide will then be along racial lines, which “will be most dangerous for Singapore”, he added.

Noting that various opposition members have previously criticised the NCMP scheme as being a “second-class MP scheme”, he questioned if a situation where minorities are all, or largely, NCMPs while elected MPs are the racial majority is a better outcome.

On proportional representation, he said it would result in parties based on race and religion, or a special interest.

“Some parties will be incentivised to build their base around a particular interest in order to win seats, rather than to appeal to a broad majority of voters,” he added.

While the Government learns from the experiences of other countries to design, operate and evolve its own systems, Chan said Singapore does not copy blindly. This is especially so when systems elsewhere are struggling to find the right answers to their own issues, he said.

Chan said the GRC system has two fundamental objectives: to ensure that Parliament is representative of the racial make-up of society, and that politics does not become racially charged.

“These two objectives are equally important and Poa’s suggestion will unfortunately not ensure that our politics does not become racially charged,” he said.

Calling the system a safeguard that ensures Parliament is multiracial, he said it seeks to prevent parties from campaigning singularly for one race.

He also responded to Poa’s other criticisms of GRCs. On her point that voters lose a representative when an MP vacates his or her seat in a GRC as a by-election is not required, he said this is to prevent any single member from holding the rest to ransom by threatening to step down.

No one can gain an electoral advantage by playing on race, as the team is still required to be multiracial in their approach to appeal to all races in the next election, he added.

He noted that the apex court had settled the law on this when it ruled in 2017 that there was no requirement for a by-election in Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC after Halimah Yacob resigned to run for president.

On GRCs allowing candidates to tap the “star power” in each team, Chan said this was not the “preserve of the incumbent”.

The Workers’ Party’s win in Aljunied GRC in 2011 could arguably be largely due to the “star power” of its former chief Low Thia Khiang, he said.

Similarly, in 2020, few would deny the “star power” of PSP chairman Tan Cheng Bock contributed much to the opposition party’s showing in West Coast GRC, which resulted in Poa and Leong Mun Wai becoming NCMPs, he added.

On the other hand, a team member who becomes a liability could affect the electoral performance of the team, he said.

Chan told the House that it cannot afford to gamble or experiment. “We get it wrong, we lose everything that we have built up over all these years... We will not have the chance to strive towards the Singaporean tribe that I described regardless of race, language and religion,” he said.

During the nearly 3½-hour debate, Murali Pillai (Bukit Batok) and three Nominated MPs – Raj Joshua Thomas, Janet Ang and Mark Chay – set out why they did not support the PSP’s motion.

Chay said GRCs play an important role in maintaining Singapore’s social fabric and promoting racial harmony. However, he proposed further reducing the size of GRCs and requiring at least one female representative in each GRC.

Raj Thomas said while there is no perfect electoral system, the question is whether it can be tweaked such that the disadvantages are minimised while retaining the good.

Murali cited how he encountered attempts to politicise race issues when he contested Bukit Batok in 2016 and 2020. He said he did not encounter similar attempts when contesting in Aljunied GRC in the 2015 General Election, and attributed this to the difficulty of exploiting matters along racial lines when political parties fielded minority candidates in their respective teams.

Some good people from minority races may decide to not run if there is a danger of elections being politicised along racial lines without the GRC system, he cautioned.

“There may be a time when race may not matter. But that is not now. Until that day, we will still need the GRC,” he said. THE STRAITS TIMES