Senior Minister Tharman to run for President, will resign from Government and PAP on 7 July 2023
By Goh Yan Han, Political Correspondent, The Straits Times, 9 Jun 2023
Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam will be running for president in the upcoming election, stepping aside from politics after 22 years.
“I wish to inform you that I have decided to put myself forward as a candidate in the forthcoming presidential election. I hence wish to retire from politics and all my positions in Government,” he said in a letter to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Thursday. PM Lee is also secretary-general of the People’s Action Party (PAP).
Mr Tharman said he plans to resign from the PAP and step down from his posts as senior minister and coordinating minister for social policies on July 7 – a month from Thursday.
This is so that he can first fulfil his immediate commitments in Singapore and internationally, and ensure that arrangements are fully in place for his constituents in Jurong GRC to be well served for the rest of the electoral term, he said.
In a reply letter, PM Lee accepted his resignation and thanked him for his “distinguished service to Singapore”.
“Your departure from the Cabinet and the Party will be a heavy loss to me and my team. We will miss your leadership, insightful views, and wise counsel,” said PM Lee.
“But I understand why you have decided to make this move and run for president. It is in keeping with the spirit of public service and sense of duty that you have shown all these years,” he added.
Mr Tharman will also step down as chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), deputy chairman of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, chairman of the Economic Development Board’s International Advisory Council and other responsibilities he has been undertaking in his ministerial capacity.
“I have been humbled by the requests I have received in recent months, from Singaporeans from different walks of life, to stand in the presidential election if President Halimah chose not to stand again,” he said.
He added that it had been a difficult decision, and that he consulted his family and gave careful thought to how he could best serve the country in the years ahead.
“I believe that I can now best serve Singapore not in politics, but in a different role that has to be above politics,” he said.
“If I am fortunate enough to be elected as president, I will represent the unity of Singaporeans, of all races and religions, social backgrounds, and political leanings, at a time when views in the population are becoming more diverse.”
He added that he would be thorough and impartial in fulfilling the constitutional duties of the president with regard to the prudent use of the nation’s reserves and the key appointments that preserve the integrity of the Singapore system, and do his best to project Singapore’s interests and voice of reason in an increasingly turbulent world.
Mr Tharman also thanked PM Lee for his leadership, advice and openness to collegial debate through the years.
PM Lee said that should Mr Tharman be elected as the next president, he was confident that Mr Tharman would “carry out these duties scrupulously” and with “the independence of mind” he has always displayed.
Mr Tharman’s announcement comes after incumbent President Halimah Yacob said on May 29 that she would not be running for a second term. The election has to be called before the end of Madam Halimah’s six-year term, which expires on Sept 13.
Mr Tharman, 66, is the first candidate to throw his hat in the ring as no other presidential hopeful has made his intentions public.
He satisfies the public service requirement for eligibility under the law, due to his ministerial posts.
Under the public sector service requirements laid down in the Constitution, presidential candidates must have held office – for at least three years – as a minister, chief justice, Speaker of Parliament, attorney-general, Public Service Commission chairman, auditor-general, accountant-general or permanent secretary, among others.
Mr Tharman was first elected to Parliament in November 2001 in Jurong GRC, and has been re-elected four times since.
His current posts include Senior Minister since 2019, Coordinating Minister for Social Policies since 2015, and MAS chairman since 2011.
He has been deputy chairman of GIC since 2019, and chairs its Investment Strategies Committee.
His previously held portfolios include deputy prime minister, finance minister and education minister.
Before stepping into politics, he spent most of his professional career at MAS.
On the international stage, Mr Tharman has been chairman of the Group of Thirty, an independent global council of leading economic and financial policymakers, since January 2017.
Since April 2017, he has also been chairing the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance, to review the system of multilateral financial institutions.
Mr Tharman’s decision to stand raises questions about who will take over his current posts and cover for him in his constituency.
He is the anchor minister of Jurong GRC, which is also represented by Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Law Rahayu Mahzam, Dr Tan Wu Meng, Mr Xie Yao Quan and Mr Shawn Huang.
There is no requirement under the law to call a by-election if an MP resigns, even if that member is a minority.
In 2017, when Madam Halimah made her plans known that she would be stepping down as MP of Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC, she said she would ask PM Lee to assign another MP to her constituency to help out.
President must be above the political fray: Tharman hopes to be unifying figure if elected
By Goh Yan Han and Natasha Ann Zachariah, The Straits Times, 9 Jun 2023
Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said he hopes to be a unifying figure for Singaporeans amid fundamental changes in the country and across the world, as he put himself forward on Thursday as a candidate in the upcoming presidential election.
Mr Tharman said he felt that the time was right for him to serve in the role, should he be elected, and to keep the social compact strong.
“The president has to be a unifying figure at a time that people have more varied preferences and even more varied politics,” he said.
He was speaking to the media outside Taman Jurong Community Club on Thursday, about three hours after he had announced his decision to resign from the Government and the People’s Action Party on July 7 to stand in the upcoming election. His wife, Ms Jane Yumiko Ittogi, was also with him at the media doorstop event.
He had submitted his letter of resignation on Thursday to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who had accepted it.
Mr Tharman said it had been a difficult decision to make as he was very comfortable being a policymaker. “But I think we are entering a fundamentally different era,” he noted.
Apart from changes within Singapore as the population and electorate mature, the world is now set up for crises – economic crises or pandemics, which are going to keep coming – as well as geopolitical conflict, he said.
“We’ve got to hold our own as Singapore – a very small country with a strong reputation built up over the years – but we’ve got to hold our own, so that the population holds together, we can still do well as Singaporeans, and feel good about being Singaporeans,” he said.
Singaporeans themselves have to keep the compact and remain faithful to one another, he said, citing a Chinese saying, “feng yu tong zhou”, which means “going through the most difficult times together in the same boat”.
Of his own chances in the upcoming presidential election, which has to be called by the end of President Halimah Yacob’s term on Sept 13, Mr Tharman said he has made no assumptions.
“I’ve never made assumptions in all the elections I’ve taken part in. This is different because it’s not a political contest, unlike general elections... This is about choosing the right person,” he said.
“I put myself forward to serve to the best of my ability, using all my experience in economics, in finance, in international affairs, and the standing I have internationally.”
Mr Tharman said he was putting himself forward to serve Singaporeans in this new role – “not a political role, but a different one that has to be above politics”.
He added: “The president has to be above the political fray. And that’s what I mean when I say the president can play a unifying role.
“And I offer myself partly because through my background, everyone knows who I am, and they know that I have an independent streak.”
When asked if he felt that his race would put him at a disadvantage in an open election not reserved for any ethnic community, Mr Tharman said he did not think it would be an issue for him.
“It has not been an issue for me in Jurong (GRC). But I guess I also have the advantage of being known to Singaporeans, and having been a minister in various capacities for some time in education and finance,” he said.
When asked why he decided to run for president, given that he had previously said he was not interested in being prime minister, Mr Tharman used an analogy from his sporting days in school.
“In almost all the games I’ve played, particularly competitive field games at a very high level, I never liked being centre-forward. In fact, I didn’t particularly like being the person who scored goals,” he said.
“Now I enjoyed greatly, and for some reason was quite good, at being centre-half, left-half, sometimes full-back.
“I don’t know why, but I like guarding the back and I like planning the game. And I enjoy making the pass to the person who is really the centre-forward to make the most of the ball.”
It was not a rushed decision to stand for election, but one he had thought about over several months, said Mr Tharman.
“Once Madam Halimah announced her decision, I knew I had to take it very seriously. I was leaning that way already... Once I made up my mind, I felt like this is a very important matter.
“No point hedging and disguising the fact that I intend to stand. I should just come out openly and say,” he said.
When asked who would cover his duties after he resigns as an MP for Jurong GRC, Mr Tharman said Mr Shawn Huang would take over his Meet-the-People sessions at Taman Jurong, apart from his own at Jurong Spring.
For other events, the other MPs – Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Law Rahayu Mahzam, Mr Xie Yao Quan and Dr Tan Wu Meng – will take turns to help.
“Once the party decides who might be a potential candidate for the next round, he or she will have to be on the ground, working very hard. So that’s the system. I think Jurong will be served very well,” he added.
Economist, sportsman and poet: 6 things about SM Tharman, who will run for president
By Tham Yuen-C, Senior Political Correspondent, The Straits Times, 9 Jun 2023
Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said on Thursday that he plans to resign from the People’s Action Party (PAP) and step down from his posts as Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies on July 7 to run for president in the upcoming election.
Here are six things to know about the 66-year-old, who is stepping aside from politics after 22 years.
1. ‘One of the best economic minds’
Before entering politics, Mr Tharman started his career at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in 1982 as an economist. He was later absorbed into the administrative service in the Education Ministry in 1995, but rejoined MAS in 1997.
At a time when being a non-scholarship holder was seen as a disadvantage in the civil service, he managed to get the highest grade among his cohort, reported The Straits Times in 2004.
He received the Public Administration Medal (Gold) in 1999, and was appointed managing director of MAS in 2001.
During his time at MAS, he also became a member of the committee chaired by then Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to review the financial services sector.
He was widely acknowledged as one of the key architects of wide-ranging reforms that liberalised the financial sector and developed Singapore as a financial hub, and was later described as the country’s financial czar after about nine years as finance minister.
Those who worked with him called him “one of the best economic minds in Singapore”.
Describing in previous interviews what the work entailed, he said it involved pulling together individuals of different backgrounds and perspectives into a team. “It’s not just a question of bright young administrative officials writing clever proposals trying to convince their ministers to implement it. It is a question of bouncing ideas off a whole range of people,” he had said.
He had said previously that he felt his contrarian views were never curbed in the civil service, and after about 19 years in service, he morphed gradually into a PAP convert.
2. Joined politics to find new answers to Singapore’s problems
In 2001, he was one of the “Super Seven” candidates in the general election, along with Mr Khaw Boon Wan, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Dr Ng Eng Hen, Mr Raymond Lim, Mr Cedric Foo and the late Balaji Sadasivan.
He was fielded in the newly created Jurong GRC, along with Madam Halimah Yacob – who was also making her electoral debut – as well as then labour chief Lim Boon Heng, Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon and Dr Ong Chit Chung.
They beat a team from the Singapore Democratic Party with 79.75 per cent of the vote, kick-starting his political career.
When asked why he entered politics, Mr Tharman said he wanted to help find solutions to the new challenges Singapore faced that would require not just adjusting policies and implementing them efficiently, but also fundamentally questioning a whole range of things being done.
Over the years, he served as the Minister for Education and Finance, and was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in 2011. He was also made Coordinating Minister for Economic and Social Policies in 2015, and Senior Minister in 2019.
As Education Minister from 2003 to 2008, he advocated more flexibility and choice for students to try new subjects and explore their diverse talents.
He began the dismantling of the streaming system, in place since the 1980s, by merging the EM1 and EM2 primary school streams in 2004, and scrapping the EM3 stream four years later.
He continued this work of building a more inclusive Singapore as Finance Minister from 2007 to 2015, making significant steps in social interventions.
These included instituting the Workfare Income Supplement in 2007, and leading the SkillsFuture lifelong learning movement, which was launched in 2014.
In an interview with ST in 2013, he described how the Cabinet had shifted to the left in how it viewed social policy and helping lower-income Singaporeans.
When describing Singapore’s approach to social policies during a 2015 interview by BBC Hardtalk presenter Stephen Sackur at the St Gallen Symposium in Switzerland, he said “I believe in the notion of a trampoline”, a phrase that went viral online.
“There are ways in which an active government can intervene to support social mobility, to develop opportunities and to take care of the old, which don’t undermine personal and family responsibility. And that’s the compact that we’re trying to achieve. It’s almost a paradox,” he had said in the interview.
Long before broadening meritocracy became a buzzword among local politicians, he spoke of it in an interview with ST in 2013.
“It’s not just education, it’s the way we treat blue-collar workers generally, ordinary workers, whether it’s in restaurants or when you’re taking transport, everywhere,” he said then.
“We are still a little too much of a hierarchy based on what happened to you at age 18, what scores you had, what qualifications you had, which course you could go to.”
He also often spoke about the importance of maintaining Singapore’s multiracial and multicultural character.
When asked early on about why he joined politics he had said: “I also enjoy chatting with people, listening to them and trying to figure things out with them. You must enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy politics, it can be a chore, or a cloud in your mind. But if you enjoy it, it keeps you going.
“Everything becomes an opportunity to help someone, an opportunity to understand an issue better so that we can find a solution, or do something novel in the community.”
3. Rebel, sportsman, poet
But there were few signs in his youth that he would one day enter politics.
As a student at Anglo-Chinese School, Mr Tharman was “completely uninterested” in his studies and had an “awful reputation for indiscipline”, reported ST in 2004.
He sat in the back row in class, hung out with the troublemakers and dropouts, and enjoyed needling his teachers.
His father, the late Professor Kanagaratnam Shanmugaratnam, was known as Singapore’s “Father of Pathology”, and established the Singapore Cancer Registry in 1967 to provide data on cancer trends in the country.
But the young Mr Tharman had no interest in studying medicine. Instead, he devoted his energies to sports – hockey, football, cricket, athletics, volleyball, sepak takraw and rugby – practising almost every day.
He has said that hockey has a special place in his heart, and he went on to join the combined schools team.
“I think a lot of what I am was actually shaped in my school days. I spent my time playing sports – almost every day of the year, sometimes two sports in a day and, often, until it was too dark to see the ball,” he said in an interview in 2004.
“You learn to take knocks, to go in for the tackle, and to live with your scars. You rely on your teammates; you lead, you win and lose as a team.”
But his sporting ambitions were thwarted when he developed severe iron-deficiency anaemia at 17, which required him to pop 25 pills a day for several years.
He was an avid reader and dabbled in poetry, penning four poems for a 1978 collection called “but we have no legends” with ACS schoolmates Chew Kheng Chuan, a former chairman of The Substation, and Yeoh Lam Keong, a former GIC chief economist.
They were all then in national service and part of the Young Writers’ Circle at the National Library.
The trio “drank countless cups of coffee”, and had “violent quarrels over strange things like grammar, meaning and whose poetic license had expired”, they said in the preface of the book.
Mr Tharman said in a 2015 interview with The New Paper that he never regarded himself as a poet, “much less a good poet”.
Following his schooling in Singapore, he studied for a Bachelor of Science in Economics degree at the London School of Economics and a Master of Philosophy in Economics degree at the University of Cambridge.
He later obtained a Master in Public Administration degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where he was conferred the Lucius N. Littauer Fellow award for outstanding performance and leadership potential.
4. Did not always agree with the PAP; brushes with the law
During his university days in London, he became a student activist, attending meetings and debates.
Uncomfortable with the politics of the PAP then, he immersed himself in leftist literature, made friends with student activists and explored “alternative” political and economic models.
His passport was impounded on his return to Singapore in 1982, and he was hauled up for questioning by the Internal Security Department (ISD).
During the 1987 Marxist conspiracy, he was again questioned for a week by the ISD.
Several of his friends were detained for allegedly subversive activities under the Internal Security Act.
Later on, when he was director of the MAS’ economics department, he got into trouble with the law for bringing a report containing a flash estimate of the country’s economic growth into a meeting with private-sector economists.
The figure was later published in The Business Times, and Mr Tharman, along with four others, was charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act. He pleaded not guilty and put himself on the witness stand.
After a long-drawn trial in 1994, he was fined $1,500 for endangering the secrecy of classified documents.
Asked how the OSA incident had affected him later on he said: “In the totality of life, I don’t think this was a serious blow. Everyone has got to have his fenders dented once in a while, and you try to come out stronger because of it.”
5. One of the most popular politicians
Going by election results, Mr Tharman is one of the most popular politicians around.
As anchor minister in Jurong GRC, his five-person team garnered the highest vote share for the PAP in the 2015 General Election, with 79.29 per cent of the vote.
Speculation about Mr Tharman becoming the next prime minister had often bubbled up.
In 2016, 69 per cent of those who responded to a poll said they would support him as Singapore’s next prime minister.
But he ruled this out, saying then: “I’m good at policymaking, I’m good at advising my younger colleagues, and at supporting the PM – not at being the PM. That’s not me.”
6. International heavyweight
In 2019, Mr Tharman was reported by international media as being on the shortlist to be the next head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Throughout his public service career, he led several international councils on economic and financial reforms.
He became the first Asian to head the International Monetary and Financial Committee, the policy advisory committee of the IMF, in 2011. He was chosen by members of the committee.
He also chaired the Group of Thirty, an independent global council of economic and financial leaders from the public and private sectors, from 2017 to 2022, and currently chairs the board of trustees of the group.
At the same time, he co-chairs the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, which aims to redefine the way the world governs water for the common good.
He also served on the High-Level Advisory Board established by the United Nations Secretary-General to make recommendations on multilateral reforms for the UN’s 2024 Summit of the Future.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2021, he co-chaired the G-20 High Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, together with Nigerian economist and World Trade Organisation director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and American economist and former United States Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.
* Parliament pays tribute and bids farewell to Tharman, NMPs
By Jean Iau, The Straits Times, 7 July 2023
Tribute was paid to Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam for his contributions over more than two decades in public service in his final parliamentary sitting on Thursday.
On Friday, the 66-year-old will step down from his posts as Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies, and resign from the People’s Action Party to run for the Singapore presidency.
“We will miss SM Tharman in this chamber, not least his commanding presence and his erudite speeches. SM’s greatest gift is, really, in making very complex economic principles sound simple,” said Leader of the House Indranee Rajah. “We also will miss his wit and his dry humour. I think most of all, we will miss a friend and a fellow Member of Parliament.”
Ms Indranee listed Mr Tharman’s contributions since he joined politics in 2001 as an MP for Jurong GRC, including as Minister for Education, Minister for Finance and Deputy Prime Minister. He has also been chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, deputy chairman of sovereign wealth fund GIC, where he chaired its Investment Strategies Committee, and chairman of the Economic Development Board’s International Advisory Council.
During his time as Finance Minister, SM Tharman’s Budget statements boosted Singapore’s economic growth and helped steer the country through the global financial crisis from 2007 to 2009, said Ms Indranee, who is also Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Among the major policies he brought in were the net investment returns framework, which provided additional resources for government spending, and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Voucher scheme to help lower- to middle-income Singaporeans.
As Education Minister, Mr Tharman introduced the Direct School Admission scheme and removed streaming in primary schools.
In his economic and manpower portfolios in Cabinet, he pushed for inclusive growth that benefited all Singaporeans. He led the SkillsFuture programme and paid particular attention to uplifting wages and improving retirement adequacy for lower-wage workers through measures such as the Progressive Wage Model, Wage Credit Scheme and the Workfare Income Supplement.
Ms Indranee also thanked the current cohort of Nominated MPs (NMPs) whose 2½-year terms will end on July 20.
The nine NMPs are Mr Abdul Samad Abdul Wahab, Ms Janet Ang, Mr Mark Chay, Mr Cheng Hsing Yao, Professor Hoon Hian Teck, Professor Koh Lian Pin, Mr Raj Joshua Thomas, Dr Shahira Abdullah and Dr Tan Yia Swam.
Ms Indranee said this cohort of NMPs was sworn in during the most unusual of circumstances amid the global Covid-19 pandemic, having to observe safe distancing in the House and wipe microphones and tables with disinfectant wipes.
“The fact that this all now seems to be in the distant past shows how far we have come and what an amazing journey was made in these last 2½ years, a journey that this cohort of NMPs walked with us.”
She highlighted the milestones the NMPs helped reach during their tenure, including tackling the Covid-19 pandemic, supporting households through the rising cost of living, unveiling the Singapore Green Plan, debating the White Paper on Women’s Development, repealing Section 377A and supporting the GST Bill.
While Singapore still faces many challenges, Ms Indranee said it is in a much better place than it was two to three years ago and is poised to move forward with the Forward SG exercise to refresh its social compact and make the country fairer and more inclusive.
“By their participation in this Parliament, they have helped to achieve this current state of affairs,” she added. “On behalf of this House, I would like to place on record our appreciation to the NMPs and SM Tharman for their contributions to this House and service to the nation.”
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