Halima Yaqoub is the President of the State of Singapore and Commander-in-Chief of the Singaporean Armed Forces, and she was a member of the ruling People's Action Party and Speaker of Parliament, the ninth from January 2013 to August 2017, and her member in Parliament was from Jurung between 2001 and 2015, and on August 7, 2017, she resigned from her posts As a speaker and member of Parliament, and as a member of the People's Action Party, she stands as a single candidate for the presidential elections in Singapore in 2017 and on September 14, she was sworn in to become the first female president in the country's history.

Halima Yaqoub, a Muslim of Indian origin from the Tamil minority, her father was a Tamil Muslim guard. He died of a heart attack and she was 8 years old, and her family was in extreme poverty at the time of her father’s death. She helped her mother sell the Nasi Padang dish, and she received her education at the Summer School for Girls in Singapore and then Tanjung Katung School for Girls and from there to the National University of Singapore, from which she obtained her BA in 1978.

In 2001, she obtained a master's degree in law from the National University of Singapore, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in law from the National University of Singapore on July 7, 2016. Halima worked as a legal officer at the National Trade Union Conference, and she became the Director of the Legal Services Department in 1992, and she was appointed Director of the Singapore Institute of Labor Studies (Teng Cheong Institute of Labor Studies) in 1999.

Halima entered politics in 2001, when she was elected to represent the Jurung constituency (GRC) and following the 2011 general elections, Halima was appointed Minister of the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports, and after a cabinet reshuffle in November 2012, she became Minister of State in the Ministry of Social Development and Family, and she also worked as President Jurong City Council, in January 2015, was included in the PAP Central Executive Committee, the party's highest decision-making body.

In the 2015 general elections, Halima was the only minority candidate in the Popular Action Party group. She has spoken effectively against Islamic extremism, especially condemning the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and separating it from it, and on January 8, 2013, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong nominated Halima Yaqoub to succeed his former president, Michael Palmer, who resigned after it was found that he had an extramarital affair.

She was elected Speaker of Parliament on January 14, 2013, and she is the first woman to hold this position in Singapore's history. Halima served at the National Trade Union Conference (NTUC) as Deputy Secretary-General, Director of the Legal Services Department and Director of the Women's Development Secretariat, and also held the position of Executive Secretary of United Employment for Electronics and Industries. electrical . Halima was elected Vice-Chair of the Standards Committee at the International Labor Conference (ILC) in Geneva from 2000 to 2002, and in 2005 in 2003 and 2004, she was the spokeswoman for workers in the International Law Commission Committee on Human Resources, Development and Training.

On August 6, 2017, Halima announced that she would give up the position of Speaker of Parliament and Member of Marsing-UT and run for the presidency in the 2017 presidential elections in Singapore, and on August 25, 2017, Halima launched her official campaign website, including the slogan of her campaign “Do Good Do Together”. Which was criticized by many because it is inaccurate.

She defended her logo, explaining that it was supposed to be cute. On September 13, she was announced as a single candidate, and on the next day she was sworn in and became the first woman to rule the country. She is married to Muhammad Abdullah al-Habashi, a Malaysian of Arab descent, and has five children.