A very very short list of minority members for President

by Hamzah Omar Yaacob

SO JUST how many MIO (Malay, Indian, Others) in the CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others) amalgamation of citizens are eligible for presidential office? Does Singapore have enough of a non-Chinese pool of private and public sector head honchos to draw from? It’s a legitimate question given that attention is paid to coming up with a mechanism to ensure that a minority member can become president.

Much of the first day of public hearings conducted by the Constitutional Commission on the presidential system was focused on this issue. In Parliament in January,  Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said given that the President represents all of Singapore, it is thus important that a minority member can assume this role. He also pointed out that there has been no Malay president since Singapore’s first president Yusof Ishak took on that then-ceremonial function from independence in 1965 up to his death in 1970.

Would Mr Yusof have qualified for the job today? Maybe, since he was also chairman of the Public Service Commission in 1959. But that was just for less than a year of service before he became Yang di-Pertuan Negara (Head of State), precursor to the Presidency. The current requirements are at least three years of service.

Since the Elected Presidency system came into effect in 1991, the only minority to receive the certificate of eligibility was Mr S R Nathan. He served two terms from 1999 to 2011, and ran un-opposed in both the 1999 and 2006 PE. Mr Nathan met the three year requirement after serving as First Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1979 to 1982.

In the private sector, agencies that deal with corporate information might well be able to churn out the number of CEOs and CFOs who have been at the helm of companies with paid-up capital of at least $100m. They might even break the statistics into race. But so far, nothing of that sort has come up.

So, we thought it would be easier to look at the pool of public sector appointments who are eligible.
According to Part 1, Chapter V, Section 19 of the constitution, only those who have been a Minister, Chief Justice, Speaker, Attorney-General, Chairman of the Public Service Commission, Auditor-General, Accountant-General or Permanent Secretary, for at least three years are eligible. CEOs or Chairmans of Central Provident Fund (CPF), Housing Development Board, JTC Corporation, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, can also run if they’ve helmed these statutory boards for, again, at least three years.

Since 1965, how many minority citizens who are still alive and who have held or are still holding office does Singapore have to draw on?

Our conclusion: Not many.

Going through civil service records threw up several Indian names who were permanent secretaries, but not a single Malay? The Cabinet is a better bet to get a Malay name with three former cabinet ministers, and current Communications and Information Minister Yaacob Ibrahim.

Here is the list of Malay, Indian and members of other races who are eligible:

Malays

Name	Qualificiations	Age
Othman Wok	Cabinet Minister (1963-1977)	91
Ahmad Mattar	Cabinet Minister (1977-1994)	75
Abdullah Tarmugi	Cabinet Minister (1994-2002) Speaker of Parliament (2002-2011)	71
Yaacob Ibrahim	Cabinet Minister (2002- Present)	60
Halimah Yacob	Speaker of Parliament (2013-Present)	61

 

Indians

Name	Qualifications	Age
S Jayakumar	Cabinet Minister (1985-2004) Deputy Prime Minister (2004-2009)	76
S Dhanabalan	Cabinet Minister (1980-1993)	78
J Y Pillay	Permanent Secretary, Ministry of National Development (1989-1995)	82
Kishore Mahbubani	Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1993-1998)	67
Bilahari Kausikan	Second Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2001-2013) Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2013-2013)	62
Ravi Menon	Second Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Trade & Industry (2007-2009) Permanent Secretary (2009-2011)	52
Sundaresh Menon	Chief Justice (2012-Present)	54
Vivian Balakrishnan	Cabinet Minister (2004-Present)	55
S Iswaran	Cabinet Minister (2011-Present)	53
K Shanmugam	Cabinet Minister (2008- Present)	57
Tharman Shanmugaratnam	Cabinet Minister (2003-2011), Deputy Prime Minister (2011-Present)	59

 

Others

Well, we couldn’t find any.

And as for the Chinese, we’ll save you the trouble of reading through the entire list. But we counted 86.

So as a re-cap, there are 86 Chinese candidates, 11 Indian candidates, and 5 Malay candidates. However, the list is not exhaustive. Even if one does not meet the requirements above (i.e. has less than three years experience or helms a different statutory board), the candidate can still run. But it would be up to the Presidential Elections Committee, the body which grants the Certificate of Eligibility, to decide if he or she has the required experience to become President.

Maybe then more minority names will come through? But if such candidates were approved, might they be perceived as coming in by the back door?

 

Additional reporting by Elias Wee. 

 

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- Hamzah Omar Yaacob