Q: Do we need electoral constituencies, GRC and town councils?
A: No!
Presently in all democracies in the world, the electoral system is to have parliamentary representatives based on geographical regions; such a regional based system is not carved in stone. In fact, it may be wrong and prone to abuse for smaller countries. In countries with a large land area which have special regional needs, such a system is all right as the areas' special need would have a representative voice in parliament and the special groups would not be neglected in the overall policy formulation of the country.
Singapore is just a small island and there is no rationale that we need "regional" representations; residents living in housing board flats 10 kilometers apart could not demand vastly different national policies; what regional needs people in Tanjong Pagar have that are different from those in Potong Pasir - nothing! So these electoral boundaries serve no national needs; any distractions means greater complexity and greater maintenance expenditure. The constituency boundaries are only needed for household addressing only, not for the electoral process.
We only need to create a fixed number of seats in parliament, say a hundred. Each party need to send only one representative to contest in the numbered seats, No. 1, 2, 3... 100. For election, before campaigning starts, the voters would be randomly divided equally into 100 groups and each group would only cast votes for the candidates in their corresponding numbered seats. So such an electoral system is as simple as it can be to fairly vote 100 representatives into parliament.
With this change in electoral system, we only need one town council - The Singapore Town Council.
Amen!
Chan Rasjid.
A: No!
Presently in all democracies in the world, the electoral system is to have parliamentary representatives based on geographical regions; such a regional based system is not carved in stone. In fact, it may be wrong and prone to abuse for smaller countries. In countries with a large land area which have special regional needs, such a system is all right as the areas' special need would have a representative voice in parliament and the special groups would not be neglected in the overall policy formulation of the country.
Singapore is just a small island and there is no rationale that we need "regional" representations; residents living in housing board flats 10 kilometers apart could not demand vastly different national policies; what regional needs people in Tanjong Pagar have that are different from those in Potong Pasir - nothing! So these electoral boundaries serve no national needs; any distractions means greater complexity and greater maintenance expenditure. The constituency boundaries are only needed for household addressing only, not for the electoral process.
We only need to create a fixed number of seats in parliament, say a hundred. Each party need to send only one representative to contest in the numbered seats, No. 1, 2, 3... 100. For election, before campaigning starts, the voters would be randomly divided equally into 100 groups and each group would only cast votes for the candidates in their corresponding numbered seats. So such an electoral system is as simple as it can be to fairly vote 100 representatives into parliament.
With this change in electoral system, we only need one town council - The Singapore Town Council.
Amen!
Chan Rasjid.
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