The Constitution of the Republic of Singapore (Amendment No. 3) Bill, if passed, will enable the President to perform such roles when the Cabinet advises that it is in the national interest to accept and hold that role.
Also, for the President to take up such roles, they must not be prohibited under the Constitution from performing the functions of that office.
For example, Article 19A(1) bans the President from actively engaging in any commercial enterprise.
During its proposal, the PMO said that the Cabinet may also advise the President against saying or doing anything in performing the functions of such an office. The President must also relinquish an office if the Cabinet advises him or her to do so.
HOSPITAL WEBSITE OUTAGE
MPs will also discuss the hours-long disruption on Nov 1 that affected the websites of Singapore’s public healthcare institutions, including all hospitals and polyclinics.
Health tech agency Synapxe has attributed the outage to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, in which online services or sites are overwhelmed by unusually high volumes of data traffic.
Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh asked about the remedial measures taken to mitigate future disruptions, as did MP Poh Li San (PAP-Sembawang), who also asked about the impact on users.
MP Sylvia Lim (WP-Aljunied) wanted to know when the authorities would make public the report of the event, while MP Jessica Tan (PAP-East Coast) asked if the Health Ministry had any insight into the motive for the attack.