In a candid moment during a recent dialogue session, presidential hopeful Tharman Shanmugaratnam recounted what he and his wife did when trying to start a family.

A video of the sharing was uploaded on his social media accounts, where the 66-year-old former Deputy Prime Minister first said that he and his wife, Jane Ittogi, began researching when they decided to start having children.

The research led them to discover a tribe in Africa called the Yoruba tribe.

"The Yoruba tribe had loads of twins," Tharman said. "So we tried to figure out why."

The couple found that the Yoruba tribe consumes a lot of yams.

"Whack on orh nee"

"So Jane being Teochew, we decided to really whack on orh nee," Tharman continued, earning some laughter from the room.

And because the couple did not know whether the husband or the wife was meant to eat the yam, Tharman and Ittogi both decided to consume orh nee copiously.

"We both whack," he said, adding that the couple frequently patronised Teochew restaurants to eat orh nee.

It came to a point where they had to ask the restaurants to make the orh nee less sweet, recalled Tharman.

"We orh nee have 4 kids"

The couple's efforts seemed to have paid off as they were blessed with four children.

They have a daughter and three sons together, though none of the children are twins.

"We orh nee have four kids," the caption of the video cheekily wrote.

Tharman said that while he couldn't claim if there was any science behind it, at least "the orh nee was good".

The dialogue session where Tharman candidly shared his family planning strategy  was described as one where there were "wonderful conversations with the minds of tomorrow" on Tharman's social media.

You can watch the sharing for yourself here:

@tharman.sg We orh nee have 4 kids! #Tharman #TharmanShanmugaratnam #fyp #tiktokSG #orhnee ♬ original sound - Tharman Shanmugaratnam

Running for President

On Jun. 8, it was announced that Tharman would resign from the People's Action Party (PAP) and run in the 2023 Presidential Election.

His last day in parliament was Jul. 7.

He formally launched his presidential bid at York Hotel on Jul. 26 and submitted an application for a presidential eligibility certificate on Aug. 7.

On Aug. 18, it was announced that Tharman, along with other presidential hopefuls Ng Kok Song and Tan Kin Lian qualified for Presidential Election 2023.

You can hear more from Tharman through our interviews here:

@mothershipsg next time you get red marks in your report card, show your parents this video 👀 #tiktoksg #sgnews #PE2023 ♬ original sound - Mothership

Top image via @tharman.sg/TikTok.