Tin Pei Ling currently manages three roles that could each be considered a full-time job.
First, she is the mother of two young boys, aged five and two.
Second, she is the Member of Parliament (MP) for MacPherson Single Member Constituency (SMC), having been re-elected there twice, with increasingly convincing margins (65.58 per cent in 2015, and 71.74 per cent in 2020). Elected in 2011, she spent the first six years of her time there working the ground as a full-time MP.
Third, after re-entering the private sector in 2017, she is now also the CEO of Business China, a government-linked non-profit organisation, from which no less than four of her predecessors have gone on to become political office-holders.
Speaking to Mothership in a meeting room in MacPherson CC one Sunday morning, Tin looks back on her decade in politics, offering some insight into how – and why – she steadily took on more and more responsibilities since her extremely rocky start in 2011, and how she balances her commitments on all three fronts.
2011: "very high pressure" entry to politics
One wonders whether she achieved her present position in spite of her baptism of fire in 2011, which involved a branded handbag and some amount of foot-stomping.
Or was it because of the initial setbacks that gave Tin the desire to prove her critics wrong, and to do right by the people who had deemed her fit to run in the first place?
"When I first entered politics in 2011, it was high pressure, very high pressure," she says, acknowledging the comments from one observer that she had been the "lightning rod" for criticism in GE2011.
"I was new, new as a MP, new to MacPherson. And so at that point in time, I decided that I shall do nothing else, but just focus on my role as MP, within MacPherson, [and] in Parliament. And so I gave up my job to just do that."
She would serve for six years as a full-time MP, "building up the processes and systems, building up a team just focusing on solving the issues on the ground".
She would not necessarily recommend it for other first-time MPs, glibly adding that "everyone will have their own path".
For her however, it was "a very good decision", allowing her the focus to be "really just building".
She credits her MacPherson grassroots team for their support, saying that they "basically accepted me from day one", and that they could have easily lobbied for "someone better", given the controversy that surrounded her then.
Behind the scenes, however, a different story played out.
"I remember crying every night, just wondering, 'why is this happening?'" she says, of the initial emotionally-trying period.
Photo by Zenn Tan.
"I can laugh at it, I can talk about it very openly," she says, as the span of a decade has put some space between her now, and her tumultuous 2011 election campaign.
"But still, on some level it hits me lah."
How did she get through that difficult period of time?
Her husband, Ng How Yue, a senior civil servant, was "an emotional pillar of support", she says. She recounted a period of time immediately after the GE2011 campaign where Ng would accompany her to watch romantic comedies with har jeong gai (prawn paste chicken), going out late at night for "window shopping because all the shops are closed".
"And then after a while you're gonna just learn to be even stronger", she says.
"Of course, after a while, people get to know me better, and it just gets a little bit easier thereafter."
2015: Re-election in MacPherson SMC, motherhood
Tin "can't quite pinpoint" when things turned around for her exactly, but remembers that it took place in 2015, at around the time when her first child was born.
2015 seems to be the point where the upward trajectories of her personal life and her political career began to run in parallel, with the successes in both arenas feeding into the other.
"By then, I think there was a certain momentum, there was a certain way of doing things," she recalls.
Photo by Zenn Tan.
Winning in an SMC
"I was very happy when they made [MacPherson an] SMC" she said, explaining that while she only knew that it would be carved out of Marine Parade GRC for GE2015 at the same time as the general public (i.e. when the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) report was released), she'd had her suspicions prior.
"I had this feeling lah, that maybe we will [become an SMC], but cannot be sure".
Did she know that she will be fielded as the candidate for MacPherson SMC? Tin said that she made it "quite public" that she had no intention of being moved to a different constituency.
"I've worked here so hard already, don't move me!" she says, with joking petulance.
"The thinking was that if it's an SMC, and you win it, then it sort of just addresses the criticisms of 2011," she explains, such as the suggestion that she could not have won a seat if not for "riding on coattails" of more experienced candidates in a GRC.
Tin Pei Ling with grassroots volunteers, announcing her candidacy for MacPherson SMC in 2015. Photo by Jeanette Tan.
2015 would see fresh criticism levelled at her, however, in the form of her National Solidarity Party opponent Cheo Chai Chen's quip that motherhood could be her "weakness", a widely-slammed comment which he later retracted as a "joke".
Ironically, Tin says that becoming a mother gave her a boost:
"I felt a little bit like I 'levelled up', personally, because now I become a mother (she raised her hands animatedly).
I don't know whether it's the hormones or what, I just feel like I need to be a mother, and then I need to be more focused on the future, you know, how to build that future that I want for my kids to grow up in."
Beyond the election, she says that motherhood allows her to serve better as an MP, as she is able to appreciate the needs and concerns of families in her constituency, and beyond.
The positive effect that being a mother has had on her political career is clearly evident in what Tin calls "one of the biggest and most memorable experiences" of her time in Parliament: a Private Member's Motion titled "Aspirations of Women", for which Tin coordinated speeches and replies over two days of debate in the House.
The Motion "raised some very pertinent issues pertaining to women development and aspirations in Singapore", Tin says.
In a similar vein, she explains that her decision to re-enter the private sector shortly after her re-election was, in part, motivated by a desire to "enrich" her contributions in Parliament, by allowing her to gain industry exposure.
"It was very useful because I entered a tech firm, and it helped me understand the landscape more, to know what are the possibilities on the horizon for Singapore, and even for MacPherson, in fact."
Looking ahead
Within MacPherson, Tin is looking to the future, in terms of the sustainability of the estate.
As it is a "very mature" estate, Tin acknowledges that "we can't expect things to keep getting torn down and rebuilt", saying that large-scale redevelopment projects are unlikely to be the norm. This means that tapping on smart technologies, which can help to reduce maintenance costs and improve residents' experience, has to be the long-term goal.
Her thinking is not confined to the realm of technical solutions to quantifiable problems though, but extends to the relational sphere too.
"It cannot just be 'me and them' lah, it has to be, they care about each other", expressing her hopes to cultivate goodwill and community spirit within MacPherson.
Arguably, this thinking, is something that could only come from a politician who has been able to satisfactorily handle the prosaic "bread and butter" issues which have been the focus of so many election campaigns.
These issues have found ample air time in Parliament through Tin, with one example being how she called attention to an unusual spike in breakdowns affecting over 460 lifts in 2017.
An investigation by the Housing and Development Board revealed that one particular batch of lifts had doors and sensors that were more susceptible to misalignment even though the lifts complied with prevailing standards. This triggered corrective action by the company responsible, including bringing in a team of inspectors for "100 per cent checks" on all the lifts.
Her recent 71.74 per cent electoral result is evidence that she has indeed been able to make that upward movement in terms of the hierarchy of needs.
Still, she says that she is "thankful and stressed" about the result. On one hand, it is a morale booster, and an affirmation of her work on the ground, but on the other hand, she anticipates that "there will be expectations that we'll have to maintain or do better the next time".
But something tells me that her real worry is not her future electoral prospects, even as she says that the 2020 result should not be taken for granted as "nobody can be sure" about the results at the next GE.
Rather, Tin's sights are set on the long-term future of Singapore, an issue brought to the fore for her by the current economic crisis, as well as her role in Business China, which she sees as "another way to contribute back to the nation" by helping Singapore to stay relevant in light of China's growing global influence.
After all, being an MP "is not just about municipal issues", she says, sharing that in spite of managing to marshal aid for needy MacPherson residents in the past few months, she worries about "Singapore's future; our place in the world", which, in her view, is now "in flux", in light of how the Covid-19 situation has thrown the previously-stable state of affairs out of equilibrium.
"It's more than just MacPherson", she ventures, before stopping herself to interject, however, that "it's still very much MacPherson. I will never, ever give up on MacPherson, I'll just make it very clear".
Media and social media
When asked about how her GE2011 experience changed her in any way, Tin says that "fundamentally I'm still the same Pei Ling, my value system still remains the same".
One thing that has changed, however, is that she is now "more steady" when it comes to media interviews, she smiles.
It is a radical departure from her infamous 2011 "I don't know what to say".
The smallest hint of nervous energy shows when the video segment kicks off, however. "This one is easy," she sighs with relief, as she answers the first question, which happens to be one about her two dogs, Volty and Shogun.
But one thing that perhaps encapsulates her growing sense of comfort with being in the spotlight is her social media usage.
Her social media "strategy" is far removed from what would be a "safe" lineup of carefully-curated anecdotes and perfectly-polished posts, scheduled for optimal timing with images from professional photographers.
Instead, she does most of it herself, and has taken to spontaneous live videos of herself on house visits, and chatting and laughing with aunties in coffeeshops on walkabouts.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CDDBl9XHIcD/
She also regularly posts pictures of her dogs, and even her children, which she says involves very little curation, and happens almost purely out of her maternal desire to announce how "I think my son is so cute":
"I'm a mother, I think my kid very cute, so I want to show off a little bit."
The reason for her free-spirited social media presence is simple: she does not have a social media strategy crafted by the experts.
"I don't really have a plan, to be honest", she says. Beyond the fact that she sees a need for balance between sharing about her work as an MP and who she is as a person. as her social media usage "has been evolving".
"I don't have any tips", she candidly admits, when asked about advice she would give her fellow MPs seeking to increase their social media presence.
It is the only question in our two-hour video-and-article interview which left her stumped.
She did, however, cite former Marine Parade GRC teammate Tan Chuan Jin as someone who she would like to learn from in terms of being "very authentic", in that she has observed that there is little difference between how he presents himself on social media and how he is in real life.
That said, her approach to social media, as she articulates it, is rather reminiscent of what she says about being subjected to a higher level of scrutiny as a woman in politics.
"I think at the beginning I felt that I had to conform to a certain way of behaviour and conduct, and that was pretty stressful," she says.
"But I think after a while, I just felt that I just need to be myself. After a while, you know, I just learned to shake it off," Tin says cheekily.
"And I think that's the best policy or best approach, because then the true self comes out, you're more comfortable, and you just focus on what really is important, what you need to do, and that's to serve the people that you represent."
Top image by Faris Samri