Presidential Election 2011 Candidate: Dr Tony Tan Keng Yam

Dr Tony Tan Keng Yam
陈庆炎博士

Education and early career
Tony Tan was educated at St Patrick's School and St Joseph's Institution. As a Singapore Government State Scholar, he earned First Class Honours Degree in Physics from the University of Singapore, topping his class.[4] As an Asia Foundation scholar, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he completed a Master of Science (Operations Research). He later earned a PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Adelaide, before going on to lecture in Mathematics at the National University of Singapore.

In 1969, Tan left the University to begin a career in banking with Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), where he rose to become General Manager, before leaving the bank to pursue his political career in 1979. From 1980 to 1981, Tan was the first Vice Chancellor of the new National University of Singapore (NUS).

In 2005, Tan was presented by NUS the Eminent Alumni Award in recognition of his role as a visionary architect of Singapore’s university sector. In 2010, he was presented the inaugural Distinguished Australian Alumnus Award by the Australian Alumni Singapore (AAS) at its 55th anniversary dinner as recognition to his distinguished career, significant contribution to society and the Australian alumni community.

A member of the People's Action Party, Tan became a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1979. He was made a Senior Minister of State in the Ministry of Education in 1979, before joining the Cabinet in 1980. He served in the Cabinet as Minister for Education (1980–81 & 1985–91), Minister for Trade & Industry (1981–86), Minister for Finance (1983–85), and Minister for Health (1985–86).

In December 1991, Tan stepped down from the Cabinet to return to the private sector and rejoined Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer from 1992–95, while retaining his seat in Parliament as a representative for the Sembawang Group Representation Constituency.

Tan subsequently left OCBC and rejoined the Cabinet in August 1995 as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence. In August 2003, he relinquished the Defence Minister's portfolio and became the Co-ordinating Minister for Security and Defence, while retaining the post of Deputy Prime Minister.

Unusually for a PAP Minister, Tan clashed with his colleagues and then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew over issues such as the Graduate Mothers Scheme, under which the children of mothers without university degrees received lower priority when registering for primary school. Tan, then Minister for Education, advocated abandoning the policy, which was ultimately scrapped. He also took the lead in espousing a cut in CPF in the 1980s, which Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had said would not be allowed except “in an economic crisis”.

He later persuaded Minister for National Development Mah Bow Tan to abandon plans to demolish an old mosque in his constituency of Sembawang. Dubbed the “Last Kampung Mosque in Singapore”, it was later designated a heritage site.

Presidential election 2011 candidate: Tan Kin Lian

Tan Kin Lian
陈钦亮

Business career
[edit]Chairman and CEO of NTUC Income
Tan Kin Lian became the general manager of NTUC Income Insurance Co-Operative in 1977, at the age of 29, subsequently re-designated as chief executive officer and remained in this position until April 2007. During his leadership the company has grown from having $40 million in assets in 1977 to more than $17 billion in assets and over one million policyholders in 2007.
[edit]Other Corporate Appointments
Tan Kin Lian’s 2007 CV mentions more than 60 directorships and other corporate appointments [7]. Of these, the most notable is the chairmanship of International Co-operative & Mutual Insurance Federation (1992-1997), an international organisation which at that time represented 123 insurance groups in 65 countries, employing 260,000 people (www.icmif.org). The total assets of the members of this international federation totalled USD 1.5 trillion (1997 figure).

Political Career

Tan Kin Lian was a People's Action Party member for 30 years but left the party in 2008 due to inactivity and disagreement with the party's value system. He was previously the party's branch secretary at Marine Parade for 3 years and was chosen in 1977 by Goh Chok Tong, a new MP at that time, to test a pilot scheme for setting up block committees, now known as residents' committees. For the first 10 years, Tan was active in Marine Parade constituency but became inactive for the next 20 years after he moved to Upper Thomson and later to Yio Chu Kang areas.
According to Tan Kin Lian himself, he was asked to stand for elections to parliament twice, in 1979 and 1985 (exact dates uncertain). He declined both times, earlier - due to his work commitments and later - because he disagreed with the direction of the party policy (on national service, graduate mothers scheme, etc).

Election promise:
On 3 June 2011, a friend collected the certificate of eligibility forms on behalf of Tan for the Singaporean presidential election, 2011. On 7 June 2011, Tan Kin Lian confirmed that he would be running for the presidency. Following this, he promised to donate a significant part of the $4 million presidential salary to a specially formed charity and circulated several statements outlining his position on the role of the president, including a controversial statement on safeguarding the reserves. The statements drew a mild rebuke from present and previous senior members of Singapore government, who attempted to publicly clarify that the Elected President has only "custodial powers" and not "executive powers". In reply, Tan Kin Lian issued another statement, where he agreed with the limitations but nevertheless stressed that “the president does not need to be armed with strong executive powers to make an impact. A well qualified and properly elected President will make his impact through the power to persuade, to influence, to counsel, to convey feedback and if necessary, to articulate informed positions on specific issues.”