Tony Tan

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Tony Tan Keng Yam (born February 7, 1940) is a Singaporean politician who served as the seventh President of Singapore from 2011 to 2017 after winning the 2011 Singaporean presidential election with 35.2 percent of the vote and winning by a narrow 0.4 percent margin over Tan Cheng Bock.

Tan was sworn in as president on September 1st in 2011 and served as president until 31 August 2017. He is Singapore's only living former president.

Education

Tan was educated at St Patrick's School and St Joseph's Institution before graduating from the University of Singapore (now the National University of Singapore) with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics under a Singapore Government scholarship.

Under the Asia Foundation Scholarship, he went on to complete a Master of Science degree in operations research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He earned his Doctor of Philosophy in applied mathematics at the University of Adelaide and went on to teach mathematics at the University of Singapore.

Personal life

Tan Cheng Siong, the former general manager of OCBC Bank, was Tan Cheng Siong, Tan's paternal grandfather. Tan Chin Tuan, his uncle, was the former Chairman of OCBC Bank. Tan Kim Seng's maternal grandmother, Annie Tan Sun Neo, is also a great-great grandson of philanthropist Tan Kim Seng.

Tan, a first-year physics student at the University of Malaya—the predecessor of the National University of Singapore's National University of Singapore—was introduced to an arts undergraduate who fell in love and would marry five years later. Tan married Mary Chee Bee Kiang in 1964, and the couple have four children together.

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Career

Tan left the University of Singapore in 1969 and joined OCBC Bank, where he became the general manager before leaving the bank in 1979 to enter politics.

Tan resigned from the Cabinet to return to the private sector, where he rejoined OCBC Bank as the chairman and chief executive officer from 1992 to 1995, while retaining his seat in Parliament for Sembawang GRC in December 1991.

Following his second retirement from Cabinet in 2005, Tan was named Deputy Chairman and Executive Director of GIC, the country's sovereign wealth fund. He was also appointed Chairman of the National Research Foundation, Deputy Chairman of the Research, Innovation, and Enterprise Council, and Chairman of Singapore Press Holdings concurrently.

Tan's tenure at GIC coincided with increases in transparency in the investment fund's operations, prompting growing questions regarding the fund's credibility after high-profile investments in UBS and Citigroup.

After being elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sembawang GRC in 1979 by-elections, Tan was a veteran of the ruling People's Action Party (PAP). In 1979, he was subsequently named as the Senior Minister of State for Education.

He joined the Cabinet in 1980 and served as Minister of Education. Tan reformulated a program that favored the children of more educated mothers in primary school placement ahead of younger children of less educated mothers in response to widespread opposition and public outrage over the policy, which culminated in PAP's lowest polling since independence in 1984.

He also introduced the free schools scheme, encouraging established educational institutions in Singapore to charge their own fees and have control over their governance and teaching staff, but parents continued to condemn these schools as "elitist" and drove poorer families out of reach to poorer families due to subsequent fee hikes.

Tan served as Minister of Trade and Industry from 1981 to 1986. He served as Minister of Finance from 1983 to 1985, and Minister of Health from 1985 to 1986.

Tan proposed a cut in the Central Provident Fund (CPF) in the 1980s, but Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew announced that no one would be allowed except "in a humanitarian crisis."

Tan was also known to have protested the shipping industry protest in January 1986, the first in Singapore for about a decade, according to fellow Cabinet Minister Ong Teng Cheong, who is also Secretary-General of the National Trade Union Congress, who decided that the strike was necessary.

Tan, the Minister of Trade and Industry, was worried about investors' reactions to a suspected rise in labour relations and the effects on foreign direct investment.

According to historian Michael Barr's review, senior [grassroots] union leaders bore "increasing disquiet" after being barred from participation in NTUC's decisions, which were effectively handled by "technocrats" in the government. Unlike former NTUC Secretary General Lim Chee Onn's predecessor, Ong Teng Cheong in 1983, the unions' "implicit pact" with the trade unions, implicating grassroots leaders in top decisions and "working effectively and forcefully" in the union interests, which Lim had never seen in a manner "in a way that Lim had never seen" in exchange for the unions' continuing "cooperation on the government's key industrial relations policy, which was (The NTUC had adopted "a collaborative rather than a confrontational strategy against employers" in 1969.)

Although striking was outlawed and labor unions were forbidden from discussing such topics as promotion, transfer, education, retrenchment, and reinstatement, "most recent labor disputes" were handled by the Ministry of Labor and Welfare, which had the power to both binding arbitration and voluntary mediation. Ong, however, said that these steps did not stop "management [from] exploiting the employees." In a 2000 interview in Asiaweek, "Some of them were furious with me about it": "The minister for trade and industry [Tan] was furious, his employees were furious, and his cops were furious." They received calls from America, asking what happened to Singapore?" Ong also said that the fact that the strike only lasted two days before "all the problems were resolved" was cited as confirmation that "management was just trying to pull a fast one."

When Ong began building the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) in 1981, Tan initially opposed the timing of its construction. Tan maintained that the local construction industry was overheated at the time, and that public housing should take precedence.

Tan was asked to return to Cabinet in August 1995 as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defense after Ong Teng Cheong and Lee Hsien Loong were diagnosed with cancer in 1992 and 1993 respectively. It was reported that he turned down make-up compensation, which compensates ministers for a salary cut if they leave the private sector. "The interests of a bank and my own personal considerations must take precedence over those of a bank and my own personal interests," Tan said.

He relinquished the Minister of Defense and assumed the role of Coordinating Minister for Defense and Defense in August 2003, while keeping the portfolio of Deputy Prime Minister David Cameron. Later, he begged Minister of National Development Mah Bow Tan to cancel plans to demolish an old mosque in Sembawang's constituency. It was later designated as a heritage site in Singapore, with the "Last Kampung Mosque."

Tan joined other dissatisfied colleagues in condemning the introduction of Integrated Resorts (IRs) in Singapore's attached casinos. Tan had been "appalled" that a newspaper headline dismissed the number of likely problem gamblers, who 55,000 were considered insignificant, according to a report by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth, and Sports. Every Singaporean is important. One family is destroyed if one Singaporean gets into danger, and every Singaporean is devastated. It is not likely that the government should be worried about it."

Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew wanted Tan to replace him as Prime Minister, but Tan declined. Tan was praised by Prime Minister Lee for his quick mind and tenacity. "He would say "yes or no" and stick to it," Prime Minister Lee said.

Tan, as Deputy Prime Minister, was instrumental in the establishment of the Singapore Management University (SMU) and influenced its direction and early history. The Singapore government suggested that a third university for Singapore be built in 1997.

Tan believed that the new university should distinguish itself from the two established institutions—the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), because the government wanted SMU to be an experiment in diversity. Tan believed that the third university should take the American example of the American one, which concentrated on leadership, industry, and economics.

He went to universities in the United States to learn more about them and look for prospective joint ventures. He was instrumental in the creation of the third university by reaching out to veteran businessman and current Chairman Ho Kwon Ping to help with its establishment.

Tan, who started looking after university education in the 1990s, was the driving force behind SMU, which was established in 2000 as the country's first publicly funded autonomous university.

On September 1, 2005, Tan resigned as the Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Security and Defense.

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