S Dhanabalan
IHFS – S Rajaratnam Excellence Award For Political Achievement (Post Independence)
Suppiah Dhanabalan was born in 1937 to a humble working-class family with five siblings- three boys and three sisters. He was the eldest among the boys and third in the family. His father was a construction worker at the then Naval Base. They lived in a kampong at Paya Lebar.
His early education was at Rangoon Road Primary School where luminaries like Singapore’s two Indian Presidents Devan Nair and SR Nathan and former minister for Law and Foreign Affairs S Jayakumar were his contemporaries.
His secondary education was at Victoria School where he completed his Cambridge Certificate in 1954. His stellar results earned him a teaching bursary from the MOE to study Economics at the then University of Malaya, in Singapore. He graduated in 1960 with an Honours degree and joined the civil service.
Dhanabalan’s first appointment in the civil service was as an Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Finance where he was responsible for drafting the proposal for the formation of the Economic Development Board (EDB). When the EDB was established in 1961, he became its first industrial economist. In 1968, the EDB’s founding Chairman and Minister for Finance, Hon Sui Sen handpicked Dhanabalan to help establish the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS). He was its Vice President and later Executive Vice President from 1970 to 1978.
Though he was at first reluctant to enter politics, he relented afterwards when there was an acute shortage of eligible candidates to join the political arena. Thus, in 1976 he contested the Kallang constituency as a PAP candidate and became a Member of Parliament.
In 1978 he was appointed as the Senior Minister of State for National Development and in 1979 at the Foreign Affairs Ministry. He was concurrently the Minister for Culture (1981 – 1984) and Minister for Community Development (1984 – 1986). In 1980 he succeeded S Rajaratnam as the Minister for Foreign Affairs, an appointment which lasted until 1988. During his stint at the ministry, he actively participated in ASEAN activities especially in the Indochina crisis.
In 1987, he was appointed as the Minister for National Development. Under his watch, he introduced the Integrated Land Use System in 1990 and the Concept Plan in 1991. The other important policies he introduced were HDB liberalised ownership rules, the Design and Build Scheme with private sector participation and the all-important handing over the management duties from HDB to Town Councils.
He left the Single Member Constituency of Kallang for the first time and was placed as the anchor minister in the Toa Payoh Group Representation Constituency (GRC) which won the elections. To the surprise of everyone, he announced that he was resigning from the Cabinet to retire from politics. He resigned from the Cabinet in September 1992 and pursued a career in the private sector.
But in a twist of political uncertainty, he was recalled to help as a stand-in for the cancer- stricken Lee Hsien Loong as the Minister for Trade and Industry. He took over the portfolio while Lee was undergoing cancer treatment from 1992 to 1994.
During his entire career in politics and the civil service, he was highly regarded by his colleagues and staff for his intellect, fairness and integrity. Those who knew him were of the opinion that his consultative style of management, decisive manner, down-to-earth character and concern for the underprivileged were the extraordinary qualities that separated him from others.
LKY said in 1988 that among the potential candidates to succeed him as the next PM, he identified Mr Dhanabalan as one of them but felt Singaporeans might not be ready to accept a non-Chinese as the Prime Minister. However, a survey taken immediately after this utterance showed that the majority of Singaporeans felt meritocracy was of higher importance than ethnicity.
Dhanabalan’s economic and banking experience gave him the edge to work in prominent and big corporate organisations. He was the director of the Government Investment Corporation (GIC) from 1981 to 2005 and Chairman of Singapore Airlines (SIA) from 1996 to 1998. During his time with the SIA, he handled the aftermath of the SilkAir flight MI185 crash in December 1998. In 1999 he joined the DBS Group as the Chairman and developed the bank into a world-class entity. He retired from DBS Bank in 2005.
On a personal note, Mr Dhanabalan is married to Christine Tan Khoon Hiap and have a daughter Shandini and son Ramesh.