Cabinet Member
A member of the People's Action Party (PAP) until June 2011, Tan became a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1979. He was appointed as a Senior Minister of State in the Ministry of Education in 1979. He joined the Cabinet in 1980, serving as Minister for Education (MOE, 1980–81 & 1985–91), Minister for Trade & Industry (1981–86), Minister for Finance (1983–85), and Minister for Health (1985–86).
Tan espoused a cut in the Central Provident Fund (CPF) in the 1980s, which Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had said would not be allowed except “in an economic crisis”.
Singapore saw a leadership transition that started shortly before the 1984 general elections. Three months before the election, all the members of the PAP Central Executive Committee (CEC)—except Lee Kuan Yew —had left the CEC to allow the "second generation" of PAP leaders to take root. This leadership transition saw Tan replace Singapore's chief economic architect, Goh Keng Swee, as Education Minister.
Before the 1984 election, Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Keng Swee had also pushed for policies that experimented with eugenics in Singapore, including a policy that favoured children of more well-educated mothers ahead of children of less-educated mothers in primary school placement. However, in response to popular discontent and public criticism of the policy during and after the 1984 general election (which saw the lowest votes for the PAP since independence), Tan as the new Minister for Education announced that the scheme would be scrapped. This announcement followed Tan's own May 1985 recommendation to the Cabinet to scrap the scheme.
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