Halimah Yacob

Halimah binti Yacob DUT[1] (born 23 August 1954) is a Singaporean politician and lawyer who served as the eighth president of Singapore from 2017 to 2023. [2][3] A former member of the governing People's Action Party (PAP), Halimah was the Member of Parliament (MP) representing the Bukit Batok East division of Jurong GRC between 2001 and 2015, and the Marsiling division of Marsiling–Yew Tee GRC between 2015 and 2017.[4][5] Halimah served as Speaker of Parliament from 2013 to 2017. She is the first female speaker in Singapore's history. After a constitutional amendment made in 2017, the 2017 presidential election was specifically reserved for candidates from the Malay community. Halimah resigned from the PAP and became an independent—one of the qualifications needed to run for the presidency—and ran for the 2017 presidential election which she won in an uncontested election, after the other presidential hopefuls except for her did not meet the qualifications. During her presidency, Halimah exercised presidential discretionary powers to approve emergency funding for Singapore's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She also spoke in support of women's rights. She did not seek for a re-election in the 2023 presidential election. Her term ended on 13 September 2023 and was succeeded by Tharman Shanmugaratnam on the following day. After her presidency, Halimah became the chancellor of Singapore University of Social Sciences from 1 October 2023.[6]