By Goh Chin Lian, The Straits Times, 5 May 2012
VIKRAM NAIR
I've developed thick skin
BEING flamed online for his speech is one thing Sembawang GRC MP Vikram Nair says he has come to terms with.
Says the 33-year-old: 'Initially, I was a bit more concerned about it. Now I realise that that goes with the turf. I look at it. If it needs dealing with, I deal with it.'
Netizens had heaped criticism on the Cambridge-educated lawyer during the Budget debate two months ago when he said he found it 'hurtful' that Workers' Party MP Chen Show Mao had implied the Government was not doing enough to help vulnerable groups.
His comparison of Mr Chen's proposals to a Nigerian e-mail scam, where recipients are urged to transfer funds in return for a supposed pay-off later, also drew a furious backlash. Mr Nair later clarified that he meant it as a joke.
Reflecting on the episode, the one-time university debater says: 'I've certainly had my fair share of online flaming for all sorts of things. I've developed a pretty thick skin. If there are any serious allegations, I usually put up a response on what my position is.
'But I try not to get involved in an online flame war. It will ultimately take up a lot of my time and probably not be very productive. I just take it in my stride.'
He adds: 'I always see those kinds of attacks as opportunities for me to clarify my own position and crystallise my own thinking.'
He started his term unusually. After a dead body was found in the water tank of an HDB block in his ward, he had to allay residents' fears. Since then, he has found the advocacy skills he honed as a lawyer useful in crafting appeals to government agencies on their behalf.
Being the only Tamil-speaking backbencher, the bachelor has also been busy attending events by Tamil groups, but he still keeps up regular 10km runs on weekends.
He is also invited to political dialogues, such as a young politicians' forum at the National University of Singapore in January this year.
At these fora, he tries to emulate the man who brought him into politics - Foreign Minister and Law Minister K. Shanmugam.
'He is always forthright. There is no ambiguity on where he stands on issues. He understands the reasons for policies, which is why he is able to defend them.
'I try and give straight answers. Even if you are wrong about something, by stating your reason, you can be corrected on it, which I think is also useful.'
TIN PEI LING
Constituents' needs matter above all else
ONE year has taught Singapore's youngest MP three precious lessons.
The first is that policies like help schemes must be communicated, many times over, so people understand them, says Ms Tin Pei Ling, 28.
When she met her constituents in MacPherson, she found that some of them were unaware of the help they could get despite extensive publicity.
The second is the importance of a cohesive team of volunteers, who are willing to give frank opinions and share their ideas.
The third is a personal lesson - to focus on residents' needs rather than what others say about her.
'You meet residents, hear about their problems and try to help them. These are bread-and-butter, tangible issues. It sets things in perspective. It helps you to focus on what are really important, their lives.'
Her case files include one on a middle-aged former offender who could not hold down a job because he had to look after his son who had mental problems.
She helped secure a place for his son at the Institute of Mental Health and financial aid to pay for it. She also provided aid to him, to top up his Medisave account, a criterion he had to meet to apply for a taxi vocational licence.
It was just a year ago, in the lead-up to the general election, when some people questioned her suitability to represent constituents. Her answers to journalists' questions were mocked and derided because they came across as arrogant and immature.
Reflecting on the episode, she says it came down to being in a hurry to answer questions and not properly explaining her view, which caused misunderstanding.
The full-time MP, who left her business consultant position at Ernst & Young in June last year, draws comfort from those who welcome her, like a resident who advised her on herbal concoctions she could take for her health.
Her husband Ng How Yue, 41, also encouraged her to stay true to herself. She says: 'I hope that over time, people will see that I am someone whom they can share their stories with, that I will do my best to help them, and whom they can befriend.'
EDWIN TONG
Listen more and be less judgmental
WHENEVER high-flying legal eagle Edwin Tong meets his residents and hears their concerns, he keeps in mind the words of his closest confidante.
'Take off your lawyer's hat,' advised his wife Huey Ling. He has known her for more than 20 years, since law school in Singapore.
That means listening more.
Mr Tong, 42, says: 'Sometimes residents don't know how to articulate to me what they really need. If you encourage them to speak more, you know them better and you can help more.'
When a resident needed help to pay her bills, he found out, after probing, that the single mum spent most of her money on her children's education. He helped her with financial aid and got her a job as an administrative supervisor that paid better than her previous one as a cashier.
The Moulmein-Kallang GRC MP says he also has to be less judgmental when mediating conflicts between neighbours, and among grassroots leaders with different opinions of how events should be organised.
'As a lawyer you always try to be very reasoned, and go from point A to point B in a certain ordered way. But when you're trying to deal with a grassroots problem, either both are right or both can be wrong. No one person is wrong. You need to understand both sides of the story. The perspectives matter.'
His first year as an MP has been a steep learning curve of familiarising himself with government help schemes and squeezing in weekly Mandarin lessons.
But he is thankful to his predecessor, Dr Lee Boon Yang, for his legacy of committed grassroots leaders. They were with him on his block visit this week when The Straits Times joined in, as he listened to problems like mosquitoes and smelly rubbish.
His youngest daughter Audrey, six, was with him, handing out his name cards and trying to keep up with her father's brisk pace.
'She wanted to know what I do,' says Mr Tong, as do his two other daughters, Claire, 11, and Natalie, eight.
'I think it's important that they are part of it, that they know what I do and not see me as someone who leaves the house, disappears and comes back.'
ALEX YAM
Kissing babies? Not yet
MR ALEX Yam has been active in the grassroots for 12 years but he still had his share of faux pas in his first year as MP for Yew Tee in Chua Chu Kang GRC.
One incident involved a mother who wanted him to pose for a photograph with her baby. Mr Yam, 30, who got married three months ago, did not know how to hold the baby.
'We spent two minutes wondering how she intended to pass the baby to me and went through a little dance. When I saw the photo, the baby looked totally uncomfortable,' Mr Yam says.
There was also the time a man walked into his Meet-the-People Session after he had attended to several Mandarin-speaking residents. He was halfway through his conversation with the man before he looked at the case file, realised the man was Malay and apologised for speaking in Mandarin.
Several sensitive situations have also landed on his lap, such as complaints about drumming noise at a block that made it to online forums. The drummer was a Filipino boy with special needs, but netizens made the case out to be one pitting locals against foreigners.
Mr Yam's first priority was not to deal with the online criticisms, but to meet residents to find an amicable solution: 'It doesn't really matter what you explain first. What matters most to us is to resolve the issue.'
He is thankful for his grassroots leaders, some of whom have been volunteering since before he was born and know the ground better.
'Their advice came in handy too when a hip-hop event attracted youth - but many of them did not live in the GRC.
'Some older grassroots leaders said it was a good effort, but perhaps the next round, we want to involve more of our schools... It's finding that balance of fresh ideas moderated by experience.'
He also counts his wife as a pillar of support, although he has had less time with her since he entered politics. Mr Yam is deputy executive director at the People's Action Party headquarters and head of strategies and planning at the National Trades Union Congress.
Moments together with his wife are precious now, like the time he zipped over to the hairdresser's to surprise her during a one-hour break at the height of the electoral campaign last year.
Unfortunately, a bakery next door took longer than expected to prepare her favourite waffles, leaving him with just enough time to drop the hot snack into her hands and exchange a few words.
'The three to four minutes meant quite a lot to us,' he says.
DR INTAN AZURA MOKHTAR
Sharing quality time with residents, family
ONE night, a man stormed into educator Intan Azura Mokhtar's Meet-the-People Session in Ang Mo Kio GRC, scolded the volunteers, raised his voice and thumped his fist on the table.
The assistant professor at the National Institute of Education recalls: 'I was jittery. I tried to maintain my cool.'
As she listened to his story, the man calmed down. Eventually he broke down in tears and apologised for his behaviour.
He had a daughter born out of wedlock with his foreign wife and was upset their child could not get Singapore citizenship.
Dr Intan, 35, says: 'I realised if I can pacify the person to see I'm there to help, he will calm down.'
In her first year on the job as MP, the former mathematics teacher also discovered she could not approach residents' problems as she would those of her secondary school students, for whom she would lay out solutions. Some residents are so set on how they want her to write an appeal and which ministry to approach, they will not accept any other way.
'I've learnt I cannot force my solution on them. I tell them chances are not very good, but never mind, we can still try, but at the same time, consider this other option.'
With practice, she finds it easier to zoom in on the crux of complaints, halving the 20 to 30 minutes she used to spend on each case.
When the mother of three feels guilty for neglecting her children aged 12, eight and 20 months, her fellow women MPs urge her to make the most of the time she has as 'it's not so much the quantity, but the quality'.
While they used to stroll in parks and fly kites together, now she squeezes in mummy time by driving daughter Annika to school. Elder son Adam runs errands with her on weekends.
Once, Annika surprised her by noting that ibu (mother) did not say a word during their 10-minute drive to school. Dr Intan realised then that even if she was dazed from lack of sleep, she had to pay attention and talk to her daughter during those precious 10 minutes each day.
GERALD GIAM
Doing researching and raising issues
IN HIS first year in Parliament, Non-Constituency MP (NCMP) Gerald Giam has been taken to task by the two deputy prime ministers.
The first exchange with DPM Teo Chee Hean was during the debate on ministerial salaries. It centred on the salary levels of MX9 (Superscale) civil servants, which the Workers' Party (WP) had used as its benchmark for ministers' pay.
During the Budget debate, the political newbie said tears welled up in his eyes when he thought of the difficulty many young Singaporeans have in affording their own homes. DPM Tharman Shanmugaratnam rebutted that policies have been in place to help even a family earning $1,000 a month buy a small flat.
Looking back, Mr Giam says the WP MPs are 'vastly outnumbered' in Parliament.
'The sharp debates are part and parcel of the political process and not something we should shy away from.
'The issues which I have raised and the positions I have taken are ones which I sincerely believe in. I'll leave it to Singaporeans to decide whether they agree with and support these positions.'
His priority is to do proper research on issues he believes matter to Singaporeans. That includes building up a pool of volunteers who can take the lead in researching a variety of issues.
A member of the WP executive council, Mr Giam, 34, is assigned by his party to cover health care, transport, housing and national development.
'I do a fair bit of research so that when I raise the issues in Parliament, I am able to understand the issues well and go more in depth than stay on the surface,' he says.
He feels some of his suggestions have gained traction with officialdom, such as one on rewarding doctors based on the number of patients they see and the complexity of the cases, regardless of whether these are subsidised or non-subsidised patients.
The IT consultant also joins the Meet-the-People sessions in the WP's Aljunied GRC. This leaves him even less time with his wife Elena, 33, daughter Hannah, three, and son Asher, one.
But at night, with the children on their parents' laps and Daddy as story-teller, the adventures of Masie the mouse, Hannah's favourite character, come alive, as do the stories from an illustrated children's Bible. 'This is the highlight of my day,' he says.
ONG TENG KOON
Sometimes aggressive, sometimes 'Zen'
SINCE becoming MP, commodities trader Ong Teng Koon, 35, has lived in two vastly different worlds.
The first is his familiar arena of gold and copper trading, of risk, snap decisions, frayed tempers and thousands made or lost in seconds.
The second is the Woodgrove ward in Sembawang GRC, where the pace is far slower and the work involves delicate handling of ties with residents, grassroots leaders and officials.
'My job requires me to be very aggressive, very quick,' he says. But to be an MP, he needs to be 'the polar opposite, to have patience when talking to residents, to put myself in their shoes'.
He whips out his cellphone to show a picture of a woman who gave him flowers for helping her son get into school. He has learnt not to take it personally when people vent their frustrations at him, to smile and be 'Zen'.
Another challenge is getting agencies to work outside their jurisdictions to solve problems on the ground, such as a flooded drain at the corner of land owned by various parties.
'You beg, persuade, coerce or throw a temper. But you have to be friendly. If you are too militant, they will avoid you,' he says. He urges grassroots leaders and agencies to take more risks, be less afraid to make mistakes and go less by the book, to solve residents' problems.
Although he had few problems delivering rally speeches, including in Hokkien, speaking in Parliament gives him butterflies in the stomach. He finds it a 'humbling thing to do in front of very high-quality people'.
Does he compare himself with his father, former 'grassroots' MP Ong Ah Heng?
'We're different animals. He's as ground as you can get. I try to follow his style, being genuine.'
He was one of three private-sector candidates that Law and Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam recommended, and who the minister said had the ability to be more than backbenchers.
Asked if he will leave his world of trading gold and copper, he says with a laugh: 'I'll leave this conversation for another day.'
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