On 11 June 2023, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, a recently retired Senior Minister from Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party who intends to contest at the upcoming Presidential Elections expressed his desire for there to be a contest.
In his own words:-
“Having a contest is important for me. I much rather win or lose with the contest. My whole approach is not to shy away from competition, it has always been that way. It’s how I prove myself.”
4 weeks on, it appears that there may not just be a contest, but even a three-cornered fight.
Sources Wake Up Singapore have spoken to understand that Ng Kok Song, 75, is likely to contest at the upcoming Presidential Elections, which must be held no later than 13 September 2023.
Who is Ng Kok Song?
If Kok Song does announce his intention to contest at the Presidential Elections, it is almost certain that he would meet the qualifying criteria.
Kok Song is the Chairman and co-founder of Avanda Investment Management, a “low-key” fund backed by, amongst others, Temasek, which has reportedly amassed approximately 10 billion US Dollars in assets. This quantum of the pool of assets that his company manages is well in excess of the 500 million private sector threshold found in Article 19 of the Constitution of Singapore.
According to Bloomberg, the funds three founding clients were the Singapore Labour Foundation, Temasek and GIC who helped “launch the firm with around US$4 billion in assets.”
Before he founded Avanda in 2015, Kok Song worked for more almost three decades in GIC, a professional fund management company that manages the Singapore government’s foreign assets. In an interview with the Sunday Times on 2 March 2013, the former Chief Investment Officer of GIC was reportedly of the view that “complete transparency” may “disadvantage” GIC in the financial markets by giving away information which could be sensitive.
If you are a Singaporean, it is understandable why you want to know how the reserves are being managed. But we have to make a distinction between what I call complete transparency and accountability.
There are demands out there that the Government be completely transparent about the reserves, about how much reserves there are, about what the last three months’ results are, and that the Government publish the portfolio that GIC manages.
Why do you want to disadvantage GIC in the financial markets by giving away information which could be sensitive?
In a separate interview with SPH, Kok Song said that Singapore would have no reserves to speak about if Mr Lee Kuan Yew had not done the work of building up the economy.
Kok Song, who read Physics at the University of Singapore, started his career in 1970 at the Ministry of Finance in the overseas investment department. He then joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore from 1972 to 1986. He received the Meritorious Service Medal from the Singapore Government in 2012.
After his retirement from GIC in February 2013, Kok Song served on the board of directors of the Singapore Exchange (SGX) from 2013-2018. He is currently on the board of governors of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.
In 2013, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong held a thank you dinner for Ng ahead of his retirement from GIC. In a Facebook Post, PM Lee wrote:-
Kok Song was GIC’s Chief Investment Officer. He was a key person, almost an institution, in GIC. He could have done well for himself elsewhere, but chose to stay in GIC because he found meaning and satisfaction in working for the nation, for a greater cause than a typical bank or fund manager. Besides his work in GIC, Kok Song also chaired the Wealth Management Institute and served on the Singapore Labour Foundation.
Many others like Richard and Kok Song work quietly out of the public eye, making Singapore a better place for us all with their talents and energies. They deserve our support and gratitude.
I thank them both for all they have done for GIC, and wish them a long and contented retirement.
The Meditation Champion
Aside from management of monies, Kok Song devotes time to the practice and advocacy of medication. He is the National Coordinator of The World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) in Singapore.
Kok Song, who meditates for 25 minutes every morning, helped re-introduce the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew to meditation.
In his eulogy, Lee Hsien Loong revealed that:-
“In his old age, after my mother died, my father started meditating again, this time with help from Ng Kok Song, whom he knew from GIC. Kok Song brought a friend to see my father, a Benedictine monk who did Christian meditation. My father was not a Christian, but he was happy to learn from the Benedictine monk. He even called me to suggest that I meet the monk, which I did. He probably felt I needed to resume meditation too. To give you some context, this was a few months after the 2011 General Elections. I was nearing 60 by then, and he was nearly 90. But to him I was still his son to be worried over, and to me he was still a father to love and appreciate, just like when I was small. So this morning, before the ceremonies began at Parliament House, we had a few minutes. I sat by him, and meditated.”
In an interview with happyhappy in August 2019, Kok Song shared that he once mooted the idea of introducing meditation in schools for children.
When I spoke to Mr Lee Kuan Yew several years ago, he said it might be difficult to implement meditation in all the schools. But we can start by introducing meditation in one or two schools, Mr Lee said, and when all the reports show that children become less stressed, then meditation will catch on.
So you see, we have got to do it the other way round. Start with a few schools. And the breakthrough will come when parents start to say, these other schools are doing it, well, why aren’t we doing it too? We want our children to be less stressed too. We want to find ways to help our children be happier. This will be the breakthrough.
Will we see a three-cornered fight at PE 2023?
In the last contested Presidential Elections in Singapore in 2011, 4 candidates threw their hat in the ring. The eventual winner, and establishment-backed candiate, Tony Tan, only garnered 35.20%. In other developed democracies, this result would usually lead to a run-off for the two best performing candidates. Alas, with the First-Past-The-Post system, a candidate may emerge as President even without a simple majority.
As the independent Presidential hopeful, George Goh Ching Wah, pointed out during his first doorstop interview at the Elections Department, the electorate rewarded non-establishment candidates with almost 65% of the vote.
In the aftermath of the 2011 Presidential Elections, many wondered how the results would have panned out if the non-establishment vote coalesced around a single candidate as opposed to being spread out. Put simply, a candidate that is perceived to be backed by, or linked to, the establishment would benefit from the non-establishment votes being spread across more than one candidate.
@georgegohchingwah There’s actual room for impact not just being a mere “puppet”. Its time for us to bring the presidency into the light. #georgegoh #georgegohchingwah
If allowed to contest, George Goh, who has repeatedly emphasised his independence and freedom from ties to the establishment throughout the course of his campaign, may be the only candidate that has no clear links to the establishment. While some have doubted his ability to meet the high threshold set for private sector candidates, George, who was advised by a team of professionals, remains confident that he will qualify.
@georgegohchingwah I qualify. #georgegoh #georgegohchingwah
At present, the only other non-establishment candidate that may qualify, at least on paper, is the former Secretary-General of the PSP, Francis Yuen. However, he has not made any public announcements about his political intentions.
In light of recent developments this week in Singapore, which include the arrest of a Minister in connection with a graft probe, and a profanity uttered by the Speaker of Parliament in Parliament, it would be interesting to see if this results in people registering a ‘protest’ vote at the upcoming polls.
Such protests votes are not unheard of at Presidential Elections. In Singapore’s first-ever Presidential Elections in 1993, a relatively unknown and seemingly reluctant former Auditor-General got more than 41% of the votes against the establishment-backed candidate.
We have reached out to Kok Song, via Avanda Investment Management. We will update this article when we receive a response.
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