 Thio noted that in 1966 the Wee Chong Jin Constitutional Commission had considered it " necessary and wise " to constitutionally entrench the right to vote by making it removable only by a majority of two @-@ thirds of the electorate voting at a national referendum . In addition , she cited the case of Taw Cheng Kong v. Public Prosecutor ( 1988 ) , where the High Court had made a statement which seemed to indicate that the right to vote is a privilege rather than a right . In reply , Minister for Law K. Shanmugam affirmed that the right to vote is indeed a constitutional right . He noted that it cannot be a privilege in a representative democracy since that would imply that there exists an institution superior to the body of citizens which can grant such a privilege . He also asserted that , ultimately , " it is the mettle of the people and its leadership " that determine whether the Constitution is abided by as the supreme law of the land . 
