US embassy cable - 05SINGAPORE2456

C O N F I D E N T I A L SINGAPORE 002456 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/18/2015 
TAGS: PGOV, PHUM, KDEM, SN 
SUBJECT: SINGAPORE ELECTS, UM, SELECTS ITS PRESIDENT 
 
 
Classified By: EP Counselor Laurent Charbonnet, Reasons 1.4(b)(d) 
 
1. (U) Singapore's Presidential Elections Committee (PEC) 
announced August 13 that it had certified incumbent President 
S.R. Nathan, alone among four applicants, as eligible to 
contest this year's presidential election.  Only Nathan, 81, 
will participate in the Nomination Day ceremony August 17, 
whereupon he will receive a second six-year term, which will 
begin with inauguration on September 1. The government has 
cancelled the presidential election slated for August 27. 
This is the second time that Nathan has been selected without 
having to face an opponent.  Three government-appointed 
senior civil servants comprise the PEC. 
 
Strict Criteria for Office 
-------------------------- 
 
2. (U) Singapore's constitution requires that presidential 
candidates meet a number of very specific requirements - for 
example, they must have had experience at the cabinet level 
in government, served as chairman or CEO of a statutory 
board, or been chairman or CEO of a firm with paid-up capital 
of S$100 million.  They also can not be members of a 
political party.  The position is largely ceremonial, though 
the president has limited oversight authority over government 
spending, as a check against profligate spending by an 
"irresponsible" (i.e., non-Peoples Action Party) government. 
 
A Challenger? 
------------- 
 
3. (U) Of the disallowed candidacies, the most interesting 
was that of Andrew Kuan, a member of the ruling PAP who 
announced his plans to resign from the party and run for 
president in an August 5 interview with the Straits Times. 
Kuan almost looked like he might qualify: he had served as 
CFO of Jurong Town Corporation (JTC), an important statutory 
institution, for three years.  While not exactly meeting the 
constitutional criteria, the press speculated that it might 
be good enough. 
 
4. (U) Kuan quickly ran into a PAP buzz-saw, however. 
Following several days of unflattering press stories 
regarding his performance at previous jobs, assertions by the 
GOS-controlled JTC that they had asked him to resign or face 
being fired for unsatisfactory performance finally seemed to 
do him in.  The PEC announced that his application to run had 
been denied because his work experience as group financial 
officer for JTC did not match the constitutionally mandated 
criteria.   Less controversially, the PEC also denied the 
candidacies of Ooi Boon Ewe (a reportedly formerly bankrupted 
businessman whose business license had expired) and 
Ramachandran Govindasamy Naidu (who had retired in 1987 from 
military service as a senior storekeeper). 
 
5. (C) Comment: The risk-averse GOS once again demonstrated 
it prefers superficial unanimity to the "embarrassment" of 
the predictably 25-30 percent protest vote.  The field of 
possible presidential candidates is already extremely narrow, 
limited to the political and business elite, and the PAP 
senior leadership had already backed the avuncular Nathan for 
a second term when Kuan launched his quixotic candidacy. 
While the press' background-checking and dirt-digging would 
be par for the course in any normal democracy, Singaporeans 
were aware of the ironies of a government-controlled press 
reporting "revelations" from government-controlled 
institutions regarding the qualifications of someone brave 
enough to throw his hat in the ring. End Comment. 
LAVIN