Ong Teng Cheong
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| Order: | 5th President of Singapore |
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| Presidency began | August 28 1993 |
| Presidency ended | September 1 1999 |
| Place of Birth | Singapore |
| Place of Death | Singapore |
| Wife | Ling Siew May |
| Prime Minister | Goh Chok Tong (1990–2004) |
| Copyright/Source: | Presidential Photo |
As chairman of the People's Action Party and secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress, Ong was considered a firm Lee Kuan Yew loyalist. In January 1986, he famously sanctioned a strike in the shipping industry, the first for about a decade in Singapore, without telling the cabinet. He said that he didn't 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 only lasted two days, and a deal was formed.
During his tenure in the Ministry of National Development, Ong was a champion of the Mass Rapid Transit system. He later became the 2nd Deputy Prime Minister in 1985.
Mr. Ong ran for the presidency in 1993 under PAP's endorsement. He ran against a reluctant Mr.. Chua Kim Yeoh, 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 having a higher public exposure and campaigned much more actively 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.
However, soon after his election to the President 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. Mr. Ong discussed this with the accountant-general and the auditor-general and came to a compromise that the government only need to give him 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 Mr. Ong requested. The government also tried to submit a bill to parliament for this sale and to dissolve the POSB, a statutory board whose reserves are to be protected by the president, without first informing Mr. Ong during the last year of his presidency. Mr. Ong's office had to inform the government that the procedure was wrong.
He later decided not to run for a second term as president in 1999.
Ong Teng Cheong's wife, Ling Siew May, died in August 1999 after a cancer relapse. Mr.. Ong Teng Cheong died on February 8, 2002, at the age of 66 from lymphoma in his home at about 8:14pm SST after he had been discharged from hospital a few days earlier.
External links
- ['I Had a Job to Do' Whether the government liked it or not, says ex-president Ong] - Asiaweek - MARCH 10, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 9
- [Ong Teng Cheong] - In Memory of Singapore's first Elected President, Mr. Ong Teng Cheong (1936 - 2002)
- [In Memoriam of Ong Teng Cheong] - ChannelNewsAsia
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