The 81-year-old Nathan, a former diplomat, civil servant and domestic intelligence chief backed by the ruling People's Action Party (PAP), is now set to be proclaimed the winner on Wednesday, Nomination Day.

It was Nathan's second walkover victory since 1999, the result of strict requirements for presidential candidates in the city-state.

Businessman Andrew Kuan, who was seen as the most serious of three aspiring candidates, said Sunday he would leave the PAP after his disqualification.

The polls would have been held on August 27 had Kuan been certified as eligible by the three-member Presidential Elections Committee.

"I think it's good for me to leave the PAP and be a normal Singaporean again," the 51-year-old Kuan, a PAP community leader who runs his own executive search company, told AFP.

"I don't think they will take to me too kindly after what happened last week," Kuan said, referring to the controversy over his short-lived bid to challenge the party's choice as head of state.

The PAP has ruled Singapore since it became a republic 40 years ago and now holds all but two of the 84 elected seats in parliament.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong came out in support of Nathan after Kuan broke party ranks to declare his bid.

Kuan was deemed unqualified despite having served as group chief financial officer of a state-linked developer.

He came under intense public scrutiny last week as his former employers, including industrial land developer JTC Corp., successively revealed unflattering accounts of his professional record.

The most damaging came from JTC officials who said Kuan had been asked to leave the firm.

The elections committee on Saturday said Kuan's position at JTC was "not comparable to those (qualifications) mentioned in the constitution".

Under the law any candidate must first have been a cabinet minister, chief justice, parliamentary speaker or senior civil servant. Otherwise, he must have run a company or government-linked business with a paid-up capital of at least S$100 million (US$61 million).

Also eligible are persons "in any other similar or comparable position of seniority and responsibility in any other organisation or department of equivalent size or complexity in the public or private sector" -- subject to appproval by the elections committee.

Some Singaporeans were disappointed at not being able to vote for a president.

"Any election where you have no choice of candidates is no election at all," a 37-year-old business executive told AFP.

He said he would have voted for Kuan "just because he's not PAP" and "you must have some kind of opposing opinion, and there's no room for it right now."

Singapore's president is a largely ceremonial head of state but on paper has the power to veto national budgets, reject senior appointments, scrutinise the use of financial reserves and look into the usage of the tough Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial.

A cabinet minister also said it would have been good to have a contest.

"I hope that in the future, more qualified candidates will come forward, then we can have an appropriate choice," Transport Minister Yeo Cheow Tong was quoted by the Sunday Times newspaper as saying.

The first and last time Singaporeans voted for a president was in 1993 when former deputy prime minister Ong Teng Cheong defeated retired accountant-general Chua Kim Yeow to become the first elected head of state. Before 1993, the president was selected by parliament.

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