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This is the second of three articles from CNA\u2019s interview with former Senior Minister S Jayakumar, who recently launched his book Creating Three Unique Singapore Laws: An Inside Story. The book chronicles how the elected presidency, Group Representation Constituencies and Non-Constituency Members of Parliament were established through constitutional amendment.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n SINGAPORE: The late Ong Teng Cheong “stress-tested” the elected presidency through disagreements with the government, and his term showed a president from the establishment can act independently, said former Senior Minister S Jayakumar.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was from the establishment. He had been deputy prime minister and became elected president. He took the role seriously and in the course of his term of office, there were some issues on which there were disagreements (with) the government,\u201d Professor Jayakumar told CNA in an exclusive interview.<\/p>\n The interview took place at the Old Parliament House, now The Arts House, where laws were debated and passed.<\/p>\n Prof Jayakumar launched his book, Creating Three Unique Singapore Laws: An Inside Story, in August. It traces how the elected presidency, Group Representation Constituency system and Non-Constituency Member of Parliament scheme came about.<\/p>\n Mr Ong, a former deputy prime minister, served as president from 1993 to 1999. He died in 2002.<\/p>\n The elected presidency was written into law in 1991, giving the president additional powers, including safeguarding the reserves and key public sector appointments. Before Mr Ong, the president was elected by Members of Parliament rather than voters in a nationwide election.<\/p>\n On Jul 16, 1999, towards the end of his term, Mr Ong held a press conference to announce he would not seek re-election and to raise challenges he faced working with the government.<\/p>\n He expressed disappointment over what he saw as insufficient cooperation from civil servants on certain matters, along with concerns over a possible drawdown on the reserves.<\/p>\n At a parliament sitting afterwards, then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and then-Finance Minister Richard Hu both \u201ctook pains to deal with every one of Ong Teng Cheong\u2019s points\u201d, Prof Jayakumar said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey explained it in a way to show that the facts as presented showed that there was a misunderstanding by President Ong Teng Cheong, who did not come back to rebut it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is the second of three articles from CNA\u2019s interview with former Senior Minister S Jayakumar, who recently launched his book Creating Three Unique Singapore…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/96263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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