Singapore inherited a Westminster-style Constitution from its colonial past. After independence in 1965 a new Constitution was promised, but in fact Singapore's constitutional development has proceeded by a series of amendments over the span of the Lee Kuan Yew era. Far from failing, like the common law, to achieve autochthony, Singapore's constitutional development has seen a series of experiments, and has probably now finally worn into its shoes with the election in 1993 of Singapore's first elected President, Ong Teng Cheong, under constitutional amendments passed in 1991.13
Developments have centred around three issues, which are linked: race, opposition, and PAP succession. The objectives have been to recruit the support of the non-Chinese communities while suppressing communalism; to provide avenues for the expression of views opposed to those of the Government without undermining the dominant-party system; and to ensure that the main tenets of Lee Kuan Yew's policy will be continued by his successors, and not be replaced by ``welfarism'', which is regarded as the antithesis of PAP ideology, now that communism is no longer seen as a threat to Singapore.