Ex-AIC chief Dinesh Vasu Dash answered two calls to serve: To fight Covid-19 and to join the PAP

SINGAPORE – It was a done deal. The papers had been signed and Mr Dinesh Vasu Dash, then 45, was ready to hang up his army greens after 23 years for his first taste of the private sector life as a chief operating officer at a trade finance firm.

But the brigadier-general received a request from two senior civil servants amid the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, asking him to reconsider. 

They wanted him to join the Health Ministry to help run operations fighting the pandemic.

He agreed, becoming director of its crisis strategy and operations group from June 2020 to October 2023. There, he oversaw Covid-19 testing, quarantine, case management, contact tracing, as well as the vaccination drive, which he is most well known for.

Some time in early 2024, he received another request – this time from then Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, inviting him to consider politics.

“I remember telling him: ‘I can help you as a civil servant; I need not join politics to help you,’” said Mr Dinesh, 50, one of the PAP’s 32 new candidates.

Mr Dinesh was at the time chief executive of the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC), which coordinates care services for seniors.

He

resigned on March 28, 2025,

and was later

seen with PAP MPs at community events

in East Coast GRC. 

About a month later, his candidacy was publicly confirmed by Prime Minister Wong on April 17 at

the party’s manifesto launch event

. 

Of the session with PM Wong, Mr Dinesh said: “I felt that he was a person who was genuine and very sincere, and he was a straight shooter, so he will tell you things as they are.

“And that appealed to me, and I felt that then I should be part of his team, if I had the honour of doing so.”

Speaking to The Straits Times on April 17, Mr Dinesh said he had been observing local and global politics for several years. 

He said: “I see what’s happening globally where many countries have regressed into a very inward view of politics, a very inward view of themselves. 

“And I think if Singapore gets to that state, we may not be able to recover.”

He then decided it was important for him to support any political party which was able to bring Singapore forward. 

Mr Dinesh said: “I couldn’t quite help but come to the conclusion that the best way to do it continues to remain with the PAP.”

He added that during the “tea session” – an informal name for the PAP interviews with prospective candidates – PM Wong highlighted skills of his which would be an asset to the party. “Me being a mobiliser of sorts. Me being able to organise large-scale events, as I did during Covid-19 during the height of the pandemic.”

Mr Dinesh attributed some of his operational skills to his military background.

In the SAF, he handled multiple portfolios, rising to the rank of brigadier-general. These included ramping up Singapore’s homeland security, building a closer link between the Singapore Armed Forces and the Singapore Police Force, as well as overseeing the Trump-Kim summit held in the Republic in 2018.

He brought this ability to organise at a large scale to Covid-19 operations, which he described as a “military precision logistic chain” – especially in the case of vaccine delivery.

On his time in the Ministry of Health (MOH), he said: “I was involved in every operation that MOH had done, from testing to quarantine to case management to contact tracing to every single thing under the sun, including home recovery.”

These experiences have armed him with the skills to be an MP, he said.

These are: being able to understand what residents are going through; knowing what policymaking is about; and how to operationalise policy to ensure it reaches the people.

“I am able to see through the full cycle if I were in politics, whereas in any other portfolio, you realise that you’re seeing a certain snapshot of this,” said Mr Dinesh.

When asked about criticism from some quarters that the PAP draws too much from the military’s top ranks, Mr Dinesh said: “First, I would urge whoever is making the criticism to examine the individual, by not looking at his or her rank, but to look at the person for what the person is.”

Singapore is too small to be slapping labels on people to determine their suitability for politics, said Mr Dinesh.

“There’s a certain ‘wokeness’, almost, in the way in which military people in general are being seen. But after all, he or she must have some form of skills, talents, values,” he said.

It is unclear which constituency Mr Dinesh will stand in, although he has been seen in East Coast. 

What is certain is that he will be a minority candidate from the Indian community – and will advocate for minority issues that he is deeply passionate about. 

“I am a Tamil speaker. I understand the psyche of minorities in this country, not just Tamils or Indians alone,” he said, adding that he has done some work in the Singapore Indian Development Association and the Hindu Endowments Board.

Work needs to be done on integration within the Indian community, he said, including on the divides that threaten to pull it apart, such as language or place of origin. 

He said: “It does not matter to me if you are a local Indian or a foreign-born Indian.

“As long as you are a Singaporean, it doesn’t matter to me if you’re a North Indian or a South Indian or a whatever Indian, because all of us are together, and we need to find ways to bring everybody together.”

He added that more can be done to uplift the community, and for there to be greater social mobility.

He said: “I do think that far more needs to be done, because if not, that could result in a certain segment of our population being left behind, inadvertently or unintentionally, and that’s not going to be good for anyone.”

Mr Dinesh, a father of three school-aged children, added that he also wants to speak up on helping people get back into the workforce if they have been out for some time. 

Giving the example of his wife, who has taken breaks from work due to pregnancy and other commitments, he said: “Although she’s a PhD holder (in cancer biology), she does struggle in trying to get back into the workforce, because everybody else would have already moved up. 

“So that is a real problem that the women face, and our women are more than adequately saddled with caregiving duties and motherhood duties more than men, because we are an Asian society.”

He added that politics is a constant topic of discussion within his extended family, where parties and policies are talked about, sometimes critically. 

He said: “Don’t get me wrong, the PAP is not a perfect party. There are areas at which clearly you can do a bit better.” 

But nobody else so far has presented an adequate remedy for Singapore’s unique geopolitical situation as an island nation with no hinterland, he said.

Giving the analogy of Singapore as a patient and political parties as doctors, he said: “The medication that the PAP proposes are in terms of its policies, its principles, its philosophies.” These come with their own side effects, he added.

He said: “Every single opposition party that I have seen from the time I’ve been observing politics till now constantly comments and complains about side effects. 

“They never prescribe to you an alternative treatment.”