Tharman Shanmugaratnam

Tharman Shanmugaratnam}} (born 25 February 1957), also known mononymously as Tharman, is a Singaporean politician and economist who has been serving as the ninth president of Singapore since 2023.

Prior to his presidency, Tharman served as Senior Minister of Singapore between 2019 and 2023, Coordinating Minister for Social Policies between 2015 and 2023, and Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore between 2011 and 2023.

Tharman is an economist in roles principally related to economic and social policies. He has also led various international councils and panels simultaneously. Tharman chairs the Board of Trustees of the Group of Thirty, a global council of economic and financial leaders from the public and private sectors and academia. He also co-chairs the Global Commission on the Economics of Water with Ngozi Owonjo-Iweala, Mariana Mazzucato and Johan Rockström. Its initial recommendations helped shape the outcomes of the UN Water Conference in March 2023. Tharman has also been co-chair of the G20 High Level Independent Panel on Global Financing for Pandemic Preparedness and Response since 2021. In 2017, Tharman was appointed to chair the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance.

A former member of the governing People's Action Party (PAP), he was the Member of Parliament (MP) representing the Taman Jurong division of Jurong GRC between 2001 and 2023. He also served as Deputy Prime Minister between 2011 and 2019, Minister for Finance between 2007 and 2015, Minister for Education between 2003 and 2008.

Tharman made his political debut in the 2001 general election, and has been re-elected to Parliament four times at subsequent general elections in 2006, 2011, 2015 and 2020. On 8 June 2023, Tharman announced his intention to run for the 2023 presidential election and his scheduled resignation on 7 July 2023 from all his positions in the government and as a member of the PAP, as the presidency is a non-partisan office. On 2 September 2023, Tharman was announced as the winner after receiving 70.41% of the vote in a landslide victory and was elected as the ninth president of Singapore. He is the first presidential candidate not of Chinese descent to win in a contested presidential election in Singapore. Provided by Wikipedia