Delighted to host a dinner to celebrate Mr Ong Pang Boon’s 90th birthday last night in Parliament House. This is also an anniversary year – the 65th of the PAP’s founding, the 60th of the first PAP Government in 1959, and the Singapore Bicentennial. It was a special occasion to celebrate those who have sacrificed and contributed to making Singapore what it is today.
I have been privileged to have known Mr Ong since I was a little boy. He was then the PAP’s Organising Secretary. One of my childhood memories is being brought by my father one afternoon to the PAP headquarters, then at South Bridge Road, when I was about five or six years old, during the late 1950s. I remember Mr Ong was busy going through the records of the party members, and opened a file to show me my father’s record.
As the PAP’s first paid full-time employee, Mr Ong was in charge of almost everything – party membership registration, correspondence with the branches, party members and public, and publication of Petir, the party newsletter. But Mr Ong was much more than an administrator. He played a crucial role bridging the non-Communist PAP leaders, who were mostly English educated, with the Chinese-speaking masses. Mr Ong helped amplify the messages that the leadership wanted to convey, and contributed much to the PAP’s strong victory in the 1959 Legislative Assembly elections, which brought the PAP into power for the first time.
Mr Ong was only 30 when he first became a minister. He held key portfolios – Home Affairs (1959-63), then Education (1963-1970), Labour (1970-1980) and Environment (1980-1984). In 1965, Mr Ong was one of the 10 Singapore signatories who signed the Separation Agreement. As Minister of Education, Mr Ong introduced flag raising ceremonies in schools, and the daily recitation of what later became the National Pledge.
You probably know that Mr Rajaratnam drafted the English pledge, but you may not know it was Mr Ong who had come up with the idea of a loyalty pledge to be taken by students, to inculcate national consciousness and patriotism. He wrote to Raja to explain this, and sent some initial drafts of the pledge by MOE staff to seek Raja’s comments and amendments. Raja then worked on it, and proposed a version which Mr Lee Kuan Yew subsequently amended to become the English pledge we have today. After the English text was settled, Mr Ong then personally amended the Chinese translation to produce the final Chinese version of the pledge. And so on 24 August 1966, schoolchildren all over Singapore, including myself, recited the Pledge for the first time before the national flag. Since then, generations of young Singaporeans have learnt the pledge by heart, and internalised what it means to be Singaporean. What started as a loyalty pledge for schoolchildren has now become the National Pledge for all Singaporeans.
In a long lifetime, Mr Ong has witnessed first-hand how Singapore progressed from Third World to First. As one of our founding generation of leaders, Mr Ong participated in the big events surrounding our country’s birth. His contributions, and indeed those of the First Generation, must never be forgotten.
On behalf of all of us, Mr Ong, thank you for your years of dedicated service to the PAP, and for your many contributions to Singapore. Happy Birthday Mr Ong! Here's wishing you many more healthy and fruitful years ahead.
– LHL
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