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21 Malaya L. Rev. 111 (1979)
The Constitution (Amendment) Act, 1979 (No. 10)

handle is hein.journals/sjls21 and id is 117 raw text is: 21 Mal. L.R. LEGISLATION COMMENT THE CONSTITUTION (AMENDMENT) ACT, 1979 (No. 10) The Constitution (Amendment) Act, 1979 (hereafter referred to as the amending Act) was passed by Parliament on 30 March 1979 and received the President's assent on 26 April 1979 1 It amends the Constitution of Singapore in six respects. First, the provision for amending the Constitution is itself amended; secondly the provisions on the Judiciary are amended to provide for the office of Judicial Commissioner; thirdly the provisions for the oath of office for Judges are amended; fourthly, a new provision is introduced concerning re nunciation of citizenship which differs from the provision of the Constitution of Malaysia which had previously been applicable in Singapore; fifthly an anomaly in the Constitution concerning qualifica- tion for election as President of the Republic is removed; and, sixthly, the Attorney-General is authonsed to print and publish a single, com- posite document to be known as the Reprint of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore, 1979 which would be a consolidated reprint of the Constitution of Singapore as amended from time to time and which would also amalgamate with those provisions of the Constitution of Malaysia as are applicable in Singapore. Each of these six aspects of the amending Act will be commented on separately (a) Amendment of the process of amending the Constitution Article 90 of the Constitution provided for the Constitution to be amended by a law enacted by the Legislature. This resulted in a very flexible Constitution where (except for Part IIB) the procedure for amending the Constitution was no different from that of amending any statute. The amending Act repeals and re-enacts Article 90 and the new Article 90 now provides that a Bill seeking to amend. any provision of this Constitution shall not be passed Parliament unless it has been supported on Second and Third Readings by the votes of not less than two-thirds of the total number of the Members thereof The writer offers the following four observations. First, the amendment of Article 90 to require a special majority of votes for legislation to amend the Constitution was not unanticipated. The Constitutional Commission chaired by Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin in its report of 1966 devoted considerable attention to Article 90. The Commission, it may be recalled, had proposed three different methods of amendment and of entrenchment of different parts of the Constitution. 1 The date of coming into operation was 4 May 1979

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