What you need to know about Singapore’s new Indian-origin president, Tharman Shanmugaratam? The electoral bureau said on Saturday that Tharman Shanmugaratnam, a former member of Singapore’s ruling party, had received 70.4% of the vote.
The head of government of the city-state is Lee Hsien Loong, while the head of state is the city-state’s president.
Tharman will lead the rich city-state of Singapore as its ninth president and third person of Indian descent.
From 2019 until 2023, he served as a senior minister in the Cabinet. In addition, he served as minister of education from 2003 to 2008, minister of finance from 2007 to 2015, minister of human resources from 2011 to 2012, and minister of social policy from 2015 to 2023.
In the general elections that followed in 2006, 2011, 2015, and 2020, he was re-elected to Parliament four times. He made his political debut in the 2001 election.
He is an economist by profession. In addition, Shanmugaratnam has chaired several important international councils and committees.
He served as the first-ever Asian chair of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, which advises the International Monetary Fund (IMF), from 2011 to 2014.
He earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics. He then continued to the University of Cambridge’s Wolfson College, where he earned a Master of Philosophy in economics.
Tharman was one of five people charged under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) in a case involving the publication of Singapore’s 1992 second-quarter flash GDP growth projections in the Business Times newspaper while serving as director of the MAS’s Economics Department. After contesting, Tharman was ultimately found not guilty.
“Respect for All” was used as the campaign slogan for Tharman’s presidential run. One of five people accused under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) in a case regarding the disclosure of Singapore’s 1992 second-quarter flash GDP growth predictions in the Business Times newspaper was Tharman, a member of the Economics Department of the MAS. After contesting, Tharman was ultimately found not guilty.
“Respect for All” was used as the campaign slogan for Tharman’s presidential run.
Tharman is a multigenerational Singaporean of 19th-century Tamil Ceylonese origin.
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He is one of the three children of Emeritus Professor K. Shanmugaratnam, a pathologist and medical pioneer regarded as the “father of pathology in Singapore” who established the Singapore Cancer Registry and served as the head of many international institutions dedicated to cancer research and pathology.
Jane Yumiko Ittogi, a Singaporean attorney of mixed Chinese and Japanese descent, is the spouse of Tharman. The couple has three sons and one daughter.
