Ong Teng Cheong[a] GCMG (22 January 1936 – 8 February 2002) was a Singaporean politician, architect, and union leader who served as the fifth president of Singapore from 1993 to 1999.

[3] His English-educated father Ong Keng Wee felt that the Chinese language was important if one ever wanted to become successful in business at the time and thus sent all of his children to Chinese-medium schools.

Ong's political beginnings started when he got involved in the grassroots activities in Seletar and was then introduced to Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

At that time, he was notable for pushing for an extensive rail network in the country, now known as the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), the largest construction project in Singapore's history.

During his tenure as Minister for Communications, Ong continued to be a proponent and advocate of the MRT system, often coming at odds with his fellow political colleagues who were against such an idea.

The origins of the MRT was first derived from a forecast by the country's planners back in 1967 which stated the need for a rail-based urban transport system by 1992.

Ong was an architect and town planner by training and through his perseverance and dedication became the main figure behind the initial construction of the system.

Though in 1982, Lim Chee Onn, still the secretary-general, had "proclaimed effusive[ly]" that the "PAP and the NTUC came from the same mother—the struggle with the communists and the colonialists," the relations between the unions and the government had become more strained by the 1980s.

Lim himself had been preceded by Devan Nair, founder of the NTUC and a well-known democratic socialist member of the PAP's Old Guards, and Phey Yew Kok,[17] a powerful union leader who was instrumental in convincing Chinese unions to join the NTUC during the 1970s, but had been forced to resign in 1980 and fled the country in a corruption scandal.

However, the leadership style of Lim and other newer top NTUC leaders had increasingly alienated elements of the union grassroots.

The United Workers of Petroleum Industry (UWPI) and NTUC Triennal Delegates' Conference publicly opposed the government's attempts to make house unions the norm, to the political chagrin of Lee Kuan Yew.

[citation needed] Although striking was prohibited and trade unions were barred from negotiating such matters as promotion, transfer, employment, dismissal, retrenchment, and reinstatement, issues that "accounted for most earlier labour disputes", the government generally provided measures for workers' safety and welfare since the 1960s and serious union disputes with employers were almost always handled through the Industrial Arbitration Court, which had powers of both binding arbitration and voluntary mediation.

[18] In January 1986, Ong sanctioned a strike in the shipping industry, the first for about a decade in Singapore, believing it was necessary as "[the] management were taking advantage of the workers".

"[21] Minister for Trade and Industry Tony Tan, vigorously opposed Ong Teng Cheong's decision to sanction the strike, being concerned with investors' reactions to a perceived deterioration of labour relations or an impact on foreign direct investment needed for jobs creation.

"[citation needed] According to Barr, Ong justified his commitment "in Confucian terms" in a "notion akin to noblesse oblige".

[27] However, soon after his election to the presidency in 1993, Ong was tangled in a dispute over the access of information regarding Singapore's financial reserves.

Ong discussed this with the accountant-general and the auditor-general and eventually conceded that the government could easily declare all of its properties, a list that took a few months to produce.

[32]Ong died in his sleep from lymphoma on 8 February 2002, at the age of 66, at his residence in Dalvey Estate at Tanglin at about 8:14pm Singapore Standard Time (UTC+08:00) after he had been discharged from hospital a few days earlier.

Prior to his death, Ong had asked to be cremated and for the ashes to be placed at Mandai Columbarium with those of ordinary citizens instead of Kranji State Cemetery, where late dignitaries are usually buried.