My internal alarm bells first started to ring when TJS announced that he intended to join in the EP contest. My suspicion were partially confirmed when I saw his professional background published briefly by ST. It stated:
“Mr Tan left the Administrative Service in 1990 to join investment bank Morgan Grenfell Asia. In 1994, he joined Peregrine Capital investment banking firm, and in 1997, AIB Govett. After his stint in AIB Govett ended in 2001, he worked in Standard Chartered as head of corporate advisory for Southeast Asia, which did investment banking.
Mr Tan left Standard Chartered in 2003 to join Beijing-based investment management firm Higreen as a partner. He left it in 2005 to become the regional director for Asia Pacific at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.”
TJS is applying for the EP COE under Article 19(2)(g)(iv) of the Constitution. It has three key parts and requires the qualification of the candidates to be ‘similar or comparable position, equivalent size or complexity, and financial management experience’ to that stipulated under the other clauses.
In other words, TJS needs to have held a position and accumulated experience equivalent to that of a CEO of a company with paid-up capital of $100m.
TJS says that he is seeking EP eligibility based on his previous position as the regional managing director of AIB Govett’s Asia office which he insists is equivalent to that of a CEO. He also wants us (and the PEC) to believe that the over $100m of investment managed by his office is equivalent to that of paid-up capital.
I had already pointed out that TJS is badly and deliberately mistaken in confusing “asset under management” with “paid-up capital”. Also, I have shown that even the entire company AIB Govett was far from worth anywhere near $100m, least of all the Asia regional office. It was valued at at most £14m in 2003.
Lastly, TJS himself has admitted that the Asia office was a fund management operation with merely over 20 employees.
What he has done at AIB Govett was far from similar or comparable to that of a CEO, and the Asia office was definitely not equivalent in size or complexity to that of a company with a paid-up capital of $100m.
This is supported by the fact that after he left AIB Govett, he became only the head of corporate advisory for Standard Chartered in Southeast Asia. If his previous position was equivalent to that of a CEO of a large bank entity, this subsequent position would be considered a significant demotion.
But that is not all.
He current calls himself an independent investment adviser. According to LinkedIn, he owns a company called Starpitt Private Ltd (see below). Or shall I say: used to own.
Checks with ACRA reveal that Starpitt Private Ltd is registered at address “Frankel Ave”, which is probably his home address. But interestingly, the status of the company is: ‘struck off’.
It looks like TJS is currently officially unemployed. One really wonders what he has been doing for the last few years to maintain his financial experience which he needs to perform his EP duties.
But let’s come back to this more important issue of his underlying motivation.
After realising that he was obviously to be ineligible for the EP COE, I started to suspect that he himself is fully aware that he was unlikely to qualify. Connect this to the fact the he comes from a perennially attention-seeking party called SDP, I firmly believed that TJS was doing all this either to draw public attention to himself or his party.
And that was when the real motivation of his feint EP endeavours was confirmed when TJS spoke at the recent SDP event, Singapore Day Party. A blogger reported: “(TJS’s) second reason for running for President was that the campaign would ‘raise the profile of all non-PAP forces’, which would aid the opposition’s outreach campaign to prepare for the next general elections. Mr Tan said that the opposition cannot have a low profile for the next five years, and must ‘seize every opportunity’ to reach out to the people.”
He holds this as an objective despite understanding that the EP contest is supposed to be non-party-political.
I believe that TJS has all along expected the PEC to reject his application, even before he started off this presidential venture. Once that happens, it would provide himself and SDP with the perfect opportunity to make a typical hue-and-cry not unexpected of this rancorous and attention-craving party.
They would take the opportunity to launch an exaggerated outcry about the EP system in general, and the PEC decision process specifically.
But as we would all know by then, it is all part of SDP’s old game – a well planned and well rehearsed crafty scheme to draw attention to itself, its misplaced causes and ideology disconnected with the current political paradigm.
And this time round, TJS had been enlisted to play a starring role of the (presidential) show.
Enjoy the (in)famous SDP charade!
“Mr Tan left the Administrative Service in 1990 to join investment bank Morgan Grenfell Asia. In 1994, he joined Peregrine Capital investment banking firm, and in 1997, AIB Govett. After his stint in AIB Govett ended in 2001, he worked in Standard Chartered as head of corporate advisory for Southeast Asia, which did investment banking.
Mr Tan left Standard Chartered in 2003 to join Beijing-based investment management firm Higreen as a partner. He left it in 2005 to become the regional director for Asia Pacific at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.”
TJS is applying for the EP COE under Article 19(2)(g)(iv) of the Constitution. It has three key parts and requires the qualification of the candidates to be ‘similar or comparable position, equivalent size or complexity, and financial management experience’ to that stipulated under the other clauses.
In other words, TJS needs to have held a position and accumulated experience equivalent to that of a CEO of a company with paid-up capital of $100m.
TJS says that he is seeking EP eligibility based on his previous position as the regional managing director of AIB Govett’s Asia office which he insists is equivalent to that of a CEO. He also wants us (and the PEC) to believe that the over $100m of investment managed by his office is equivalent to that of paid-up capital.
I had already pointed out that TJS is badly and deliberately mistaken in confusing “asset under management” with “paid-up capital”. Also, I have shown that even the entire company AIB Govett was far from worth anywhere near $100m, least of all the Asia regional office. It was valued at at most £14m in 2003.
Lastly, TJS himself has admitted that the Asia office was a fund management operation with merely over 20 employees.
What he has done at AIB Govett was far from similar or comparable to that of a CEO, and the Asia office was definitely not equivalent in size or complexity to that of a company with a paid-up capital of $100m.
This is supported by the fact that after he left AIB Govett, he became only the head of corporate advisory for Standard Chartered in Southeast Asia. If his previous position was equivalent to that of a CEO of a large bank entity, this subsequent position would be considered a significant demotion.
But that is not all.
He current calls himself an independent investment adviser. According to LinkedIn, he owns a company called Starpitt Private Ltd (see below). Or shall I say: used to own.
Checks with ACRA reveal that Starpitt Private Ltd is registered at address “Frankel Ave”, which is probably his home address. But interestingly, the status of the company is: ‘struck off’.
It looks like TJS is currently officially unemployed. One really wonders what he has been doing for the last few years to maintain his financial experience which he needs to perform his EP duties.
But let’s come back to this more important issue of his underlying motivation.
After realising that he was obviously to be ineligible for the EP COE, I started to suspect that he himself is fully aware that he was unlikely to qualify. Connect this to the fact the he comes from a perennially attention-seeking party called SDP, I firmly believed that TJS was doing all this either to draw public attention to himself or his party.
And that was when the real motivation of his feint EP endeavours was confirmed when TJS spoke at the recent SDP event, Singapore Day Party. A blogger reported: “(TJS’s) second reason for running for President was that the campaign would ‘raise the profile of all non-PAP forces’, which would aid the opposition’s outreach campaign to prepare for the next general elections. Mr Tan said that the opposition cannot have a low profile for the next five years, and must ‘seize every opportunity’ to reach out to the people.”
He holds this as an objective despite understanding that the EP contest is supposed to be non-party-political.
I believe that TJS has all along expected the PEC to reject his application, even before he started off this presidential venture. Once that happens, it would provide himself and SDP with the perfect opportunity to make a typical hue-and-cry not unexpected of this rancorous and attention-craving party.
They would take the opportunity to launch an exaggerated outcry about the EP system in general, and the PEC decision process specifically.
But as we would all know by then, it is all part of SDP’s old game – a well planned and well rehearsed crafty scheme to draw attention to itself, its misplaced causes and ideology disconnected with the current political paradigm.
And this time round, TJS had been enlisted to play a starring role of the (presidential) show.
Enjoy the (in)famous SDP charade!
