MUSLIM MPS IN SINGAPORE: PART 2 OF 2

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 SINGAPORE 000343

SIPDIS

STATE FOR INR/B

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/07/2015
TAGS: PINR PGOV PHUM PREL PTER SN SOCI
SUBJECT: MUSLIM MPS IN SINGAPORE: PART 2 OF 2

REF: SINGAPORE 312

Classified By: Amb. Franklin L. Lavin, Reasons 1.4 (b)(d)


1. (U) This cable completes the biographic reporting on
Singapore's 12 Muslim MPs. Reftel covered five of them and
reviewed the role they play in Singapore and how they are
perceived by the Muslim community. The biographies are
designed to be stand-alone documents, so acronyms and
organizations are described in each biography.

==============
MP Biographies
==============

Halimah Binte Yacob
--------------


2. (U) Halimah Binte Yacob has been a member of parliament
since 2001. She was one of 25 new candidates fielded by the
ruling People's Action Party (PAP) that year and was the
first female Muslim MP to be elected since 1959. She
reportedly declined several invitations from the PAP to enter
politics while her children were younger, but finally joined
after a personal invitation from then Prime Minister Goh Chok
Tong. In December 2004, she was named to the PAP's Central
Executive Committee, making her one of its two Muslim
representatives.


3. (U) In parliament, Halimah has championed the interests of
workers and women. In particular, she is concerned about
older and less skilled workers, many of whom are Malays, who
have been hurt by Singapore's economic restructuring and
shift away from traditional manufacturing. Halimah also
fought successfully for equal medical benefits for women
civil servants. She has criticized academic streaming or
tracking, which she considers elitist and detrimental to
racial and cultural integration among Singaporean children.


4. (C) Halimah does not appear to have a prominent position
in the Muslim community. She occasionally appears on the
Malay-language television news, but seldom is quoted in
Berita Harian, Singapore's Malay-language newspaper, and
rarely attends large Malay/Muslim events attended by emboffs.
The leadership of Jamiyah (the Muslim Missionary Society)
was unenthusiastic about her in a recent meeting with
emboffs. Halimah has a much stronger background in the trade
union movement. She first joined the National Trades Union
Congress (NTUC) in 1978. She has served several stints in
the Ministry of Manpower and, in 1999, was recruited by the
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions to represent
Singapore at the International Labour Organization (ILO).
Within Singapore's Muslim community, she has taken the lead
in co-ordinating job-training programs run by the various
Muslim self-help groups.


5. (U) In 2003, Halimah participated in an International
Visitor Program on Organized Labor in the United States and
was impressed by U.S. laws ensuring equal employment
opportunity. It was her first trip to the U.S., but she has
traveled extensively in Southeast Asia and Western Europe.


6. (U) Born in Singapore on August 23, 1954, Halimah comes
from a humble background. Her ethnic Indian father died when
she was eight years old, leaving the family impoverished.
She helped her ethnic Malay mother to sell food to support
the family. Due to this experience, she believes that people
can overcome difficult circumstances through hard work, but
the government should lend a helping hand. With a
scholarship from the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore
(MUIS),she was able to attend the University of Singapore
law school. In 1978 she earned her Bachelor of Law degree
and later a Masters in 2002 from the National University of
Singapore. Her husband is a businessman and they have five
children in their late teens and early twenties. She speaks
excellent Malay and wears traditional Malay/Muslim clothing.

Mohamad Maidin Bin Packer Mohd
--------------


7. (U) Mohamad Maidin Bin Packer Mohd first entered
parliament in 1991. He has held a number of sub-cabinet
positions at the Ministries of Education, Environment, and
Information and the Arts. Since 2001, he has been Senior
Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs. As
the highest ranking Muslim in the Ministry which administers
the Internal Security Act, under which Jemaah Islamiyah
suspects have been detained without trial, Mohamad Maidin has
the sensitive task of assuring Singapore's Muslim minority
that the process is fair.


8. (U) Maidin has deep ties with the Muslim community. He
was a founding member of MENDAKI (the leading Malay/Muslim
education self-help group linked to the government) and has
been involved with other groups, such as the Islamic Welfare
Association and the Malay Language Council. He was a
journalist and assistant to the editor for more than ten
years at Berita Harian, Singapore's Malay language newspaper.
Then Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong recruited him to
join the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) in 1988 to focus
on Malay issues and improve communication with the
Malay/Muslim community. At that time, his supervisor at the
paper, Zainul Abidin Rasheed (now an MP and Minister of State
at MFA),said that Malays who joined the PAP were seen as
selling out.


9. (U) He has strongly condemned terrorism and extremism, but
is frustrated with western media depictions of Islam. After
the 9/11 attacks, he said "the only way to live as a Muslim
is to live as a moderate." He has called on religious
leaders to promote mainstream Islam and, during a January
2005 forum on terrorism and jihad, he urged the audience not
to allow sympathy for the Palestinian cause to allow them to
sanction bombings.


10. (U) Maidin was born on December 25, 1957 in Singapore and
has a high school level education. He is married to Rahimah
binte Asmore and has five children.

Ahmad Khalis Abdul Ghani
--------------


11. (C) In 2001, Ahmad Khalis Abdul Ghani was easily elected
to parliament on the People's Action Party (PAP) ticket from
one of the few Group Representation Constituencies to be
contested by the opposition (Reftel). Ahmad appears more
willing than other Muslim MPs to express his less than total
agreement with government policy. For example, he has been
skeptical of the government's willingness to consider
allowing casinos to operate in Singapore. Even during the
2001 election campaign, he hinted at his dissatisfaction with
the government, noting that "no system is perfect" and that
he had to do some serious "soul searching" before joining the
PAP.


12. (U) Ahmad's involvement in the Malay/Muslim community
stretches back to his high school days, when he was chairman
of his school's Malay language society. In college, he was
president of the National University of Singapore Muslim
Society. In 1993, he became the General Secretary of the
Muhammadiyah Association, a major Muslim charity that runs
nursing homes and a madrasah. In 2002, this was one of
several Muslim organizations that urged the GOS to not
support the U.S. liberation of Iraq.


13. (U) An enthusiastic supporter of Islamic religious
education, Ahmad has argued that Singapore's madrasahs do not
turn out extremists. His two teenage daughters attend
madrasahs. He is the Supervisor/Honorary Secretary of one
madrasah and was a member of the Madrasah Development
Committee of the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore
(MUIS) from 1998-2001. Ahmad has said that the madrasah
curriculum should prepare students to study at a wide variety
of religious and secular institutions. If anyone should
monitor Islamic education to detect extremist elements in
Singapore, he believes that Muslims themselves should do it.
He has urged Muslim leaders to "correct erroneous perceptions
of Islam which may be purveyed by the ill-informed" outside
the Muslim community.


14. (U) Ahmad was born on July 20, 1960 in Singapore. He
graduated from the prestigious Raffles Institution in 1978
and earned a law degree from the National University of
Singapore in 1985. He started his own law firm with an
ethnic Chinese partner in 1986. Ahmad is married and has
four children.

Yatiman Yusof
--------------


15. (U) Yatiman Yusof was first elected to parliament in

1984. Since 1997, he has been the Senior Parliamentary
Secretary at the Ministry of Information and the Arts. Prior

SIPDIS
to that, he spent almost six years at MFA in the same
position.


16. (U) Yatiman appears strongly committed to preserving
Singapore's multi-racial society and has sternly criticized
Muslims who question the government's treatment of its
Malay/Muslim minority. For example, in 2002, he accused the
Muslim author of some critical articles of threatening
Singapore's racial harmony and condemned Jemaah Islamiyah
terrorists as "social saboteurs who undermine our continuous,
sustained efforts at creating a multi-racial community living
in harmony."

17. (U) Born on September 22, 1946 in Johor, Malaysia,
Yatiman worked odd jobs as a youth to support his large
family. In 1964, he was forced to take a job in the
construction industry because he lacked the money to attend
university. Later, he earned a B.A. in Geography and Malay
Studies from the University of Singapore in 1972. Before
entering politics, he worked as a teacher and as a journalist
and editor at Berita Harian, Singapore's Malay-language
newspaper. In 1992, he published a book of his poetry. He
is married and has four children.

Mohamad Maliki Bin Osman
--------------


18. (U) Dr. Mohamad Maliki Bin Osman was elected to
parliament in 2001. During the last cabinet reshuffle in
2004, he was promoted to the sub-cabinet position of
Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Health and the
Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCDYS).
Another Muslim MP, Yaacob Ibrahim, is the Minister at MCDYS,
which is the major source of government funding for community
and ethnic groups. Mohamad Maliki exemplifies the new style
of Muslim MP that the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) has
been recruiting: a relatively young and highly educated
professional. He has a Bachelors and Masters degree from the
National University of Singapore (NUS) and a Ph.D. from the
University of Illinois in Social Work. He is an Assistant
Professor at NUS.


19. (U) Given his background in social work, Mohamad Maliki
has focused his efforts as an MP on strengthening Muslim
families in Singapore. He was chosen by the Muslim Community
Leaders Forum to head its focus group on family development.
He has stated that being a good Muslim means being a good
father and has encouraged a redefinition of traditional
gender roles to encourage Muslim men to help out more at
home. He has also participated in a variety of Muslim
groups, including on the Madrasah Steering Committee of the
Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) and on the
board of MENDAKI, the leading Malay/Muslim education
self-help group linked to the government.


20. (U) Mohamad Maliki was born on July 19, 1965 in
Singapore. He was the eighth of nine children and grew up in
a one-room apartment. His father was a bus driver and his
mother was a housewife. He is married to Sadiah Shahal and
they have two children.

Othman Bin Haron Eusofe
--------------


21. (C) Othman Bin Haron Eusofe is the longest-serving Muslim
MP, having been first elected in 1980. He was Minister of
State for Manpower from 1997-2001 and became Minister of
State in the Prime Minister's Office in 2004. Given the
ruling People's Action Party's (PAP's) stated interest in
recruiting a new and younger batch of MPs for the next
general election, it wouldn't be surprising if this is
Othman's last term.


22. (U) Othman has a background both in the trade union
movement and the Muslim community. He has held a variety of
positions at the National Trade Unions Congress since joining
it in 1980. He was a founding member of MENDAKI (the leading
Malay/Muslim education self-help group linked to the
government),served on the board of the Islamic Religious
Council of Singapore (MUIS),and is Vice Chairman of the
Social Enterprise Network Cooperative (SENSE),which was
created in 2004 to provide job training for Malay/Muslim
workers.


23. (U) Although he attends many Malay/Muslim community
events, he seldom appears in the press. In his few public
comments, he has expressed his concern about maintaining
racial harmony in Singapore. In 2002, he reportedly
criticized the media for its "sensationalist" and "negative"
depiction of Islam, which he claimed threatened Singapore's
social cohesion. At a forum for the Malay community on
September 11, 2002, he urged Muslims not to view an invasion
of Iraq as an attack on Islam, but as a means to combat
terrorism.


24. (U) Othman was born in Singapore on December 17, 1940.
He has nostalgically recalled growing up in a big family in
which siblings looked out for each other. He graduated from
the prestigious Raffles Institution in 1960 and earned a B.A.
in Economics and Political Science from the University of
Singapore in 1964. After graduation, he joined Singapore's
civil service, where he worked until entering politics. He
is married and has three children.

Zainudin Nordin
--------------

25. (U) Zainudin Nordin was first elected to parliament in

2001. He has maintained a lower profile than other Muslim
MPs and almost never appears in the press. He is co-chairman
of the recently launched Youth Development Network. The
organization is dedicated to resolving the problems among
Malay/Muslim youth in Singapore and to improve coordination
of efforts by the various Muslim self-help groups.


26. (U) Born on July 3, 1963, Zainudin is married and has two
young daughters. A Francophile, he spent almost four years
in France earning a Master's degree in engineering from the
College of Electrical and Electric Engineering on a
scholarship from Singapore's Economic Development Board. He
is presently the Deputy Manager of the Electronics Design
Centre of the School of Engineering at Nanyang Polytechnic.
LAVIN