Singapore constitutional communitarianism and COVID-19

As COVID-19 spread in Singapore, the authorities were able to draw on previous experience with the SARS and MERS outbreaks. Rather than relying on constitutional emergency powers, the response in Singa pore was provided through ordinary legislation granting the Ministry of Health the power to issue control orders. The restrictive measures imposed by the government were received without any significant ten sions or protests from the civil society. This seems to be dependent not only on the prompt deployment of an extensive set of social safety nets, or the severe punishments established by the emergency legislation, but also on the primacy accorded to the principle of “nation before community and society above the self”, which constitutes one of the pillars of Singapore’s unwritten “material constitution”. However, the pandemic hit at blind spots which were not found within the national community of the “residents”, but in the cohabitation with migrant workers, who in 2019 constituted 38% of the labour force in Singapore. The spread of the pandemic in the migrant worker’s dormitories and the way it has been managed constitute the most serious criticalities identified during the pandemic and have highlighted the unprepared ness of the communitarian model of Singapore to cope with more fluid and intersectional identities.