Ong Teng Cheong

Singapore's fifth president, Ong Teng Cheong (born 1936) took office in 1993. It was the climax of Ong's 21-year career as a member of Parliament (MP), cabinet minister, party chairman, and trade union chief.

Ong Teng Cheong was born in Singapore on January 22, 1936. He was educated at the Chinese High School in Singapore and proceeded to the University of Adelaide in Australia, to study architecture. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1961 and worked as an architect in Adelaide for two years before returning to Singapore in 1964. While in Adelaide he married Ling Siew May, also an architect. Ong worked as an architect in the private sector for nearly two years after returning to Singapore. In September 1965 he left for the United Kingdom to pursue a post-graduate degree in town planning at the University of Liverpool on a Colombo Plan scholarship. He obtained his master's degree in civic design (town planning) in 1967.

Ong returned to Singapore in 1967 and joined the planning department of the ministry of national development. However, he was soon sent to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) special fund for assistance in urban renewal and development project, where he participated in the formulation of a long-term comprehensive concept plan for guiding the future physical development of his country. He had also led teams of planners in designing Telok Blangah new town and in conducting a comprehensive study of central area transportation and land use, with emphasis on the mass rapid transit (MRT). Ong left the civil service in 1971 to work as an architect and town planner in the private sector until June 1975, when he was appointed as senior minister of state for communications.

Ong's interest in community service began in the late 1960s when he assisted Hwang Soo Jin, then member of Parliament (MP) for Jalan Kayu, in his constituency work. However, his political career began after the September 1972 general election, when he was elected MP for Kim Keat constituency after winning 74 percent of the valid votes cast. Ong was among the first batch of ten People's Action Party (PAP) candidates elected into Parliament in 1972 to replace the old guard. After that he was returned as the MP for Kim Keat in 1976, 1980, 1984, and 1988. In 1991 the Kim Keat constituency became part of Toa Payoh Group Representation Constituency (GRC), but Ong succeeded in retaining his parliamentary seat.

After serving three years as senior minister of state for communications, Ong was appointed minister for communications in July 1978. He had been appointed acting minister for culture earlier in September 1977 and continued with this additional portfolio until 1980, when he was made minister for communications and labor. As minister for communications he had been concerned with the need for a mass rapid transit system and initiated detailed feasibility studies and visits to other countries. He succeeded in persuading his cabinet colleagues that Singapore needed the MRT system to improve its public transportation. During the launching of the MRT at Toa Payoh Station in November 1987, Ong said: "For me, this [the MRT] has been a 20-year love affair, from conception to delivery."

In January 1981 Ong was elected chairman of the PAP central executive committee. In May 1983 Ong was made minister without portfolio and was elected secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), the country's largest trade union. During the 1985 economic recession he was able to convince workers that wage restraint was necessary. In the same year he became chairman of the Singapore Labour Foundation (SLF) and, in that role, was responsible for setting up such social and recreational facilities as the NTUC Club, the NTUC Pasir Ris Resort, and the Orchid Country Club.

In 1985 Ong was appointed second deputy prime minister. In 1990 he became deputy prime minister. Thus, when Ong resigned from the PAP in August 1993 to contest the presidential election, he wore four important hats: deputy prime minister, chairman of the PAP central executive committee, secretary-general of the NTUC, and chairman of the SLF. What greatly interested Ong was amendment number 3 to the constitution, passed by Parliament on January 3, 1991. The new law changed the institution of the presidency from a ceremonial role to an elected position with powers over government budgets and key appointments in the public service.

In endorsing Ong as its choice in the presidential election in August 1993, the Straits Times, the major English-language newspaper in Singapore, wrote: "He has what it takes to shape the elected presidency in the nation's best interest."

Further Reading

Most of Ong Teng Cheong's speeches from 1978 onward have been published in Speeches, a publication of the information division of the Ministry of Communications and Information in Singapore. However, since December 1990 Speeches has been published by the Ministry of Information and the Arts. Ong's most famous speech, "Bridging the perception gap," which was given on July 26, 1992, in his capacity as PAP chairman, can be found in Petir (August 1992). For more information on Singapore see Stella R. Quah and Jon S.T. Quah, compilers, Singapore (1988), which contains 764 annotated references; and Kernial S. Sandhu and Paul Wheatley, editors, Management of Success: The Molding of Modern Singapore (1989), which has over 40 chapters on various aspects of life in Singapore.

Ong Teng Cheong 王鼎昌
Official portrait of Ong Teng Cheong taken in 1993
5th President of Singapore
In office 2 September 1993 – 1 September 1999
Prime Minister	Goh Chok Tong
Preceded by	Wee Kim Wee
Succeeded by	S.R. Nathan
Born	22 January 1936(1936-01-22) Singapore
Died	8 February 2002 (aged 66) Singapore
Nationality	Singaporean
Political party	Independent(1993-2002) People's Action Party (1972–1993)
Spouse(s)	Ling Siew May (died 1999)
Profession	Architect
Religion	Buddhism

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Ong (Chinese: 王; pinyin: Wáng).

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (August 2009)

Ong Teng Cheong, Honorary GCMG (Chinese: 王鼎昌; pinyin: Wáng Dǐngchāng; POJ: Ông Tíng-chhiong; 22 January 1936 - 8 February 2002) was the first directly elected President of Republic of Singapore. He was the nation's fifth President, in office from 2 September 1993 to 1 September 1999.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Political career 3 Presidency 4 Death 5 Notes 6 External links

Early life

Born in 1936 as the eldest son, Ong was the second of five children from a middle class family. His English-educated father felt that Chinese is important if one wants to make a success in life, and especially business, so he sent all his children to Chinese medium schools. Ong graduated with distinctions from the Chinese High School (1950-1955), but being Chinese-educated, he saw little opportunity for advancing his studies in the Malayan University, where English was the teaching medium. In 1956, with the help of his father's friends, Ong ventured abroad. Those years were to shape both his beliefs and passions. He studied architecture at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and was later joined by his childhood sweetheart Ling Siew May. They had met in secondary school, when she was studying in Nanyang Girls'. After graduation, Ong worked as an architect in Adelaide and married Siew May in 1963.^[1]

Political career

Ong Teng Cheong's political career spanned 21 years. He was Member of Parliament, Cabinet Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, before he resigned to become Elected President in 1993. Ong was talent spotted by the People's Action Party which fielded him in Kim Keat in the 1972 General Election. His first political appointment came just 3 years later when he was made Senior Minister of State for Communications. And it was as Communications Minister that Ong pushed for the development of the MRT system, the largest construction project in Singapore's history. His next challenge came on the labour front, when he became NTUC Secretary-General in 1983. Ong was diagnosed with lymphoma-cancer of the lymphatic system in 1992. But this did not dampen his desire to continue serving. He became Singapore's first Elected President a year later, and it was a presidency marked by many charitable projects, which touched the lives of many Singaporeans. Ong stepped down as President at the age of 63. ^[1]

As chairman of the People's Action Party (PAP) and secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress, Ong was considered a firm Lee Kuan Yew loyalist. In January 1986, he sanctioned a strike in the shipping industry, the first for about a decade in Singapore, without telling the cabinet. He said that he did not inform the cabinet or the government because they would probably stop him from going ahead with the strike. There was a major corporate and Cabinet backlash against his decision; however, the strike lasted only two days, and a deal was struck.^[2]

Ong (in beige suit) opens the initial section of the MRT at Toa Payoh Station in 1987.

During his tenure as the Minister of National Development, Ong was a proponent of the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system. He later became the 2nd Deputy Prime Minister in 1985.

Presidency

Ong ran for the presidency in 1993 under PAP's endorsement. He ran against a reluctant Chua Kim Yeow, a former accountant general, for the post. A total of 1,756,517 votes were polled. Ong received 952,513 votes while Chua had 670,358 votes, despite the former having a higher public exposure and a much more active campaign than Chua. There was a swing of support over to Chua's side, especially in the educated class. The reason was because of the issue of whether they wanted a PAP man as president to check on a PAP government or whether it would be better to have a neutral independent like Chua.^{[citation needed]}

However, soon after his election to the presidency in 1993, he became embroiled in a dispute with the government over the access of information regarding Singapore's financial reserves. The government said it would take 56 man years to produce a dollar-and-cents value of the immovable assets. Ong discussed this with the accountant general and the auditor general and came to a compromise that the government needed to give him only a listing of all the properties that the government owns. It took the government a few months to produce the list. But even then the list was not complete. In all, it took the government three years to come up with the information about the reserves that Ong requested.^[2] The government also tried to submit a bill to parliament for the sale of the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB), a statutory board whose reserves are to be protected by the president, to the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS), without first informing Ong during the last year of his presidency. Ong's office had to inform the government that the procedure was wrong.^[2]

Due to health reasons, he decided not to run for a second term as president in 1999.

Death

Ong Teng Cheong's wife, Ling Siew May, died in August 1999 after a cancer relapse. Ong Teng Cheong died on February 8, 2002, at the age of 66 from lymphoma in his home at about 8:14 pm SST after he had been discharged from hospital a few days earlier.

Among the four former presidents who had passed away, Ong Teng Cheong was the only one who did not receive a state funeral.^[3]

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} In Memoriam - Ong Teng Cheong, Channel News Asia
2. ^ ^{a b c} 'I Had a Job to Do' Whether the government liked it or not, says ex-president Ong, Asiaweek, 10 Mar 2006.
3. ^ "The mess that is our Presidency". Yawning Bread. http://www.yawningbread.org/arch_2005/yax-444.htm. Retrieved 2008-02-18. 

External links

• Ong Teng Cheong - In Memory of Singapore's first Elected President, Mr. Ong Teng Cheong (1936 - 2002)
• In Memoriam of Ong Teng Cheong - ChannelNewsAsia

Political offices
Preceded by S Rajaratnam	Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore 1985-1993	Succeeded by Lee Hsien Loong
Preceded by Wee Kim Wee	President of Singapore 1993-1999	Succeeded by Sellapan Ramanathan

v • d • e Presidents of Singapore Yusof bin Ishak · Benjamin Henry Sheares · C.V. Devan Nair · Wee Kim Wee · Ong Teng Cheong · S.R. Nathan

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