WP 'star catch' pushing for multi-party system
Chen Show Mao moving back to help opposition fight
By Kor Kian Beng & Jeremy Au Yong
SERIOUS. That was the answer corporate lawyer Chen Show Mao wrote in a Harvard University application asking him to say something about himself in one word.
Three decades later, the star catch of the Workers' Party (WP) recalls that form when asked to describe himself. 'I am a serious person,' said the corporate lawyer who is back from his Beijing office to prepare for the upcoming polls.
'It's unfortunate that I haven't grown more interesting over the years, but I think looking at myself now, it's still apt.'
That sense of purpose became clear when he explained his decision to enter politics in a two-hour interview that was nonetheless punctuated with wide smiles and hearty laughter.
Despite being away for nearly 30 years - first in the United States, Britain, then Hong Kong and China - he said he is relocating here for good and is ready to do the heavy lifting for opposition politics.
Whether or not he wins, he wants to 'do the job' of building a multi-party system that he feels would be more stable than a one-party system. Competitive politics will create better policies and a better Singapore, he believes.
'You don't have many Singaporeans doing this job, and I'd like to help do what I can,' he said.
With his floppy salt-and-pepper hair and tortoise-shell glasses, the 50-year-old exudes the air of an academic rather than a corporate chief. Few of his friends and now WP colleagues are familiar with his corporate accomplishments, including leading the legal team shepherding the world's biggest public listing, of China's Agricultural Bank, which raised US$22.1 billion (S$28 billion) last year.
All many know is that the name Chen Show Mao created a buzz in the opposition after The Straits Times broke the story last month that this mystery candidate who was abroad would return home and run on the WP ticket.
During the interview, he shed more light on his personal life. His father came from Taiwan to work for a trading company here before setting up his own. Two years later, when Mr Chen was 11, he, his younger sister and mother moved here.
He picked up English only then. By 18, it was good enough to help him become the top A-level student in Singapore in the 1979 cohort, which included current Cabinet ministers Vivian Balakrishnan and Lui Tuck Yew.
The National Junior College student was also student council president. During his national service as a platoon commander and brigade staff officer despite not being a Singapore citizen until 1986, he applied to study medicine at the National University of Singapore, but was rejected.
'They felt too many were going into medicine, perhaps like too many are going into the PAP,' he quipped.
In September 1982, he went to Harvard to study economics. In 1986, Mr Chen landed the Rhodes scholarship to study languages and history at Oxford, and then a law doctorate from Stanford University in the United States.
At Harvard, he helped create a student newsletter and also a programme for freshmen to work with poor families. Mr Chen also became a student intern to consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader in taking on corporate America, though he later decided to become a corporate lawyer focusing on capital markets.
Despite his credentials, he seems determined to project himself as an 'ordinary WP member'.
'I want to get away from talking about 'my standing' or this sort of thing. At 50, I am older than most other members. Unless they are 50-year-olds, they're not going to have had the chance to have done as much in their line of work. And we know paper qualifications hide a wealth of heartaches and failures,' he said.
He also seems determined to toe the WP line. He spoke repeatedly about creating a 'rational, responsible and respectable' opposition, borrowing the line from WP chief Low Thia Khiang.
He said he dropped in at the party's headquarters at Syed Alwi Road in 2007 and joined soon after. 'I found that we're like-minded people, that we share the same goals and agree on the general approach and enjoy each other's company working together,' he said.
He admitted that his plans to become an opposition politician met with some resistance from his parents.
His decision, he said, does not lie in any fundamental disagreement over a particular PAP policy or in any deep-seated resentment against the party. Rather, he speaks about wanting to create a multi-party democracy in Singapore.
'I want to give credit where credit is due. And I think the PAP has brought us quite a ways. But this journey that they talk about, from the Third World to the First World, with all due respect, that's not done yet,' he said.
Asked what stake he has in Singapore, having been away for so long, Mr Chen listed his family and his friends as 'important parts of my life'.
He added that he used to own a house here and would need to buy one when his wife, a housewife, and children are back here.
His time abroad, he added, has not made him any less Singaporean. He quipped: 'This will be a little anti-dramatic, but I'm not from outer space.'
Chen Show Mao moving back to help opposition fight
By Kor Kian Beng & Jeremy Au Yong
SERIOUS. That was the answer corporate lawyer Chen Show Mao wrote in a Harvard University application asking him to say something about himself in one word.
Three decades later, the star catch of the Workers' Party (WP) recalls that form when asked to describe himself. 'I am a serious person,' said the corporate lawyer who is back from his Beijing office to prepare for the upcoming polls.
'It's unfortunate that I haven't grown more interesting over the years, but I think looking at myself now, it's still apt.'
That sense of purpose became clear when he explained his decision to enter politics in a two-hour interview that was nonetheless punctuated with wide smiles and hearty laughter.
Despite being away for nearly 30 years - first in the United States, Britain, then Hong Kong and China - he said he is relocating here for good and is ready to do the heavy lifting for opposition politics.
Whether or not he wins, he wants to 'do the job' of building a multi-party system that he feels would be more stable than a one-party system. Competitive politics will create better policies and a better Singapore, he believes.
'You don't have many Singaporeans doing this job, and I'd like to help do what I can,' he said.
With his floppy salt-and-pepper hair and tortoise-shell glasses, the 50-year-old exudes the air of an academic rather than a corporate chief. Few of his friends and now WP colleagues are familiar with his corporate accomplishments, including leading the legal team shepherding the world's biggest public listing, of China's Agricultural Bank, which raised US$22.1 billion (S$28 billion) last year.
All many know is that the name Chen Show Mao created a buzz in the opposition after The Straits Times broke the story last month that this mystery candidate who was abroad would return home and run on the WP ticket.
During the interview, he shed more light on his personal life. His father came from Taiwan to work for a trading company here before setting up his own. Two years later, when Mr Chen was 11, he, his younger sister and mother moved here.
He picked up English only then. By 18, it was good enough to help him become the top A-level student in Singapore in the 1979 cohort, which included current Cabinet ministers Vivian Balakrishnan and Lui Tuck Yew.
The National Junior College student was also student council president. During his national service as a platoon commander and brigade staff officer despite not being a Singapore citizen until 1986, he applied to study medicine at the National University of Singapore, but was rejected.
'They felt too many were going into medicine, perhaps like too many are going into the PAP,' he quipped.
In September 1982, he went to Harvard to study economics. In 1986, Mr Chen landed the Rhodes scholarship to study languages and history at Oxford, and then a law doctorate from Stanford University in the United States.
At Harvard, he helped create a student newsletter and also a programme for freshmen to work with poor families. Mr Chen also became a student intern to consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader in taking on corporate America, though he later decided to become a corporate lawyer focusing on capital markets.
Despite his credentials, he seems determined to project himself as an 'ordinary WP member'.
'I want to get away from talking about 'my standing' or this sort of thing. At 50, I am older than most other members. Unless they are 50-year-olds, they're not going to have had the chance to have done as much in their line of work. And we know paper qualifications hide a wealth of heartaches and failures,' he said.
He also seems determined to toe the WP line. He spoke repeatedly about creating a 'rational, responsible and respectable' opposition, borrowing the line from WP chief Low Thia Khiang.
He said he dropped in at the party's headquarters at Syed Alwi Road in 2007 and joined soon after. 'I found that we're like-minded people, that we share the same goals and agree on the general approach and enjoy each other's company working together,' he said.
He admitted that his plans to become an opposition politician met with some resistance from his parents.
His decision, he said, does not lie in any fundamental disagreement over a particular PAP policy or in any deep-seated resentment against the party. Rather, he speaks about wanting to create a multi-party democracy in Singapore.
'I want to give credit where credit is due. And I think the PAP has brought us quite a ways. But this journey that they talk about, from the Third World to the First World, with all due respect, that's not done yet,' he said.
Asked what stake he has in Singapore, having been away for so long, Mr Chen listed his family and his friends as 'important parts of my life'.
He added that he used to own a house here and would need to buy one when his wife, a housewife, and children are back here.
His time abroad, he added, has not made him any less Singaporean. He quipped: 'This will be a little anti-dramatic, but I'm not from outer space.'
