Speaking at a press conference on Friday morning (Mar 11), retired medical doctor and former veteran Member of Parliament (MP) Tan Cheng Bock declared his intention to stand once again for the next Presidential Election (PE) — which has to be held latest by August 2017.

This follows two Facebook posts Tan made in the same week. In his Mar 9 post, he cryptically said, "Many of my friends and supporters have asked if l intend to contest in the forthcoming Presidential elections in 2017. I owe them an answer."

2011 PE results

The 75-year-old, who came in a razor-thin second at the four-Tan 2011 PE to current president Tony Tan, garnered an extremely respectable 738,311 votes (34.85 per cent of the valid vote), just 7,382 votes fewer than current president Tony Tan.

The other two candidates, current Singaporeans First Party secretary-general Tan Jee Say and former NTUC Income CEO Tan Kin Lian, trailed significantly behind in the 2011 polls, garnering under 30 per cent of the valid vote collectively.

Tan Cheng Bock, at the time, was seen as the presidential candidate who was most "at the centre", able to garner support from both establishment and opposition supporters.

Tony Tan was the establishment-backed candidate, while late-stage entrant Tan Jee Say, later on blamed in some circles for diluting Tan Cheng Bock's share of the vote, was backed by several opposition party leaders.

Also, while Tan Kin Lian was the first to throw his hat into the ring, he was never seen as a frontrunner in what turned out to eventually be a four-horse race.

Veteran People's Action Party (PAP) back-bencher

Prior to 2011, the Raffles Institution alumnus spent a heck of a long time serving as a PAP MP — 26 years, to be exact.

He was first elected to the single-member constituency of Ayer Rajah in 1980, and consistently won more than 70 per cent of the valid votes in every election he stood for (save for 1988, where his vote share slid to a shockingly low 69.6 per cent against Tan Song Gek of the Workers' Party).

He was also the Chairman of then Feedback Unit (now REACH) for six years (1984-1989).

In his last parliamentary election, in 2001, Tan garnered 88 per cent of the votes in his constituency — Ayer Rajah was later subsumed under West Coast Group Representation Constituency in 2006, when Tan retired from politics.

Five years later, he resigned from the ruling party to contest the presidential election.

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Ex-presidential candidate Tan Cheng Bock to reveal if he will contest in upcoming Presidential Election

Photographs by Lim Weixiang for Mothership.sg

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