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A former secondary school teacher, Seng Soon Kia, arrived at the Elections Department (ELD) office on Tuesday, June 13, to pick up application forms, signalling his interest in contesting in the upcoming Presidential Election.

Entrepreneur George Goh, 63, was at the Novena office at about 10am earlier that day with his wife and four children to fanfare.

Bizarre interview

Seng was reportedly seen pacing outside the ELD office for some 20 minutes before going in to pick up his forms, The Straits Times reported.

The former woodwork teacher then spoke to the media in Mandarin, with the resultant exchange coming across as both bizarre and not entirely serious.

@sgprimememesters Second presidential hopeful to show up at elections department office is ex-secondary school teacher Seng Soon Kia #singapore ♬ original sound - sgpmo

Age discrepancy

Even though ST reported that Seng is 72, he claimed he was born in 1952, which puts his age as 71.

When asked why he was at the ELD, he said: "I want to be the president."

In a follow-up question about the number of times he turned up to obtain the forms previously, Seng said: "I don't know if I've got chance this time."

He then added: "I was president of Singapore in 1951."

This response left the interviewer stumped.

Seng then said he was president for one year.

However, there was no president of Singapore in 1951.

Sir Franklin Charles Gimson served as Governor of Singapore, a British Crown Colony, from 1946 to 1952.

When he was asked to clarify that he was born in 1952, as he claimed, he said it was correct.

Asked if he knew about eligibility criteria

When Seng was further queried about whether he was aware of the eligibility criteria to be president, he said: "I roughly saw the news reports, I think I meet the criteria."

The criteria for private sector candidates is that they must have served for at least three years as chief executive of a company with an average of S$500 million in shareholders' equity.

Asked if he owned or ran any businesses before to meet the criteria, he replied that he used to be a technical teacher who taught students woodworking from 1971 to 1988.

He claimed to have taught in a few secondary schools, including Nanyang Girls' High School, but was transferred a few times.

Other things he said not in video

According to ST, Seng reportedly also said there were several issues that needed to be addressed in Singapore, such as a return to working from home like people did during the pandemic, and clocking fewer days in the workplace during the work week.

He added that he had written down notes about the issues but left them at home.

He also wished to improve the condition of public toilets and the standard of public bus services.

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