Presidential candidate Tharman Shanmugaratnam shares more about his school days, relationship with his wife and how he can help the 4G leadership if he becomes President.
SINGAPORE: Taking a drink in the middle of his interview, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam joked: “Don’t worry, I’m speaking the same language.”
Mr Tharman, 66, is the son of Mr Kanagaratnam Shanmugaratnam, an emeritus professor at the National University of Singapore who was known as Singapore's"father of pathology". While other presidential hopefuls have publicised their rags-to-riches stories, Mr Tharman is an alumnus of Anglo-Chinese School , which in a country obsessed with brand-name schools, is synonymous with privilege.
He recounted how he went to university with three pieces of clothing: One shirt, one pullover and one pair of pants, which he wore “nonstop”. “I went and bought wholesale nuts because it was actually very cheap … and banana and yoghurt and then you mix it up and I had it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I thought it was delicious.”The UK was also where he met wife Jane Yumiko Ittogi, who had done her master's at LSE and moved in the same social circle of friends who were “deeply interested in social issues”.
Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Jane Ittogi at their wedding ceremony in 1990 at a Hindu temple in Singapore. During the interview, she sits by the side filming Mr Tharman with her phone. At one point, they sort through photos and Mr Tharman picks up a photo of their four children, saying that he will tell an amusing story about their fecundity.
The tribe ate a lot of yams so he and his wife, who is Teochew, decided to eat as much orh nee, a yam dessert, as they could. After completing his studies and returning to Singapore, he joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore and eventually became its chief economist. He had a stint at the Ministry of Education as Senior Deputy Secretary for Policy, before returning to head the MAS.
“I used to go around Singapore a lot , when I was in the UK I used to do the same. I interacted for instance with British coal miners and in fact, I spent the whole day in the tunnels … just to understand their lives. So I like interacting with people and learning something from them.” He thinks he is more idealistic now than he was 20 or 30 years ago, explaining that this is because he recognises that a fair and progressive society can be achieved not just by the actions of the state but also by transforming lives on the ground.“I believe in collective responsibility as the best way to support personal responsibility. And I believe personal responsibility gives people the greatest satisfaction and they own their own success,” he said.
Change is coming not just in the leadership. Society is going through a “healthy evolution” where it has become more complex with more diverse views, and there is a shift of the balance between the PAP and the opposition, he added. He added that as his conversations with Mr Wong will take place privately, it does not impinge on the fundamental role of the President as independent of the government.
"The bulk of my time ... has been on the ground – interacting with people, getting to know them, sharing their joys, their frustrations – and that's been the most important part of my life in the last 22 plus years," he said. "It's not a different part of the brain ... You're the same person, but you're playing different roles, and it is such a privilege to play those different roles, and find that actually they fit together. I would not have been as effective as a national policymaker if I was not on the ground, a lot of the time."
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