SDP's Chee Soon Juan on leaving Bukit Batok for Sembawang West, & what being a 'successful politician' means

When Chee Soon Juan learnt that Bukit Batok SMC had disappeared, he had already been "half-expecting it".

He'd been working there for nine years, and knew "each and every block". Some observers had told him ahead of time that Bukit Batok might no longer be there after the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) report; Chee remained hopeful.

But on the day of the report's release, "I went straight to the list [of constituencies], my eyes went down to Bukit Batok and I couldn't find it", he recalls.

"It was like a punch to the gut."

On moving to Sembawang West

Despite the disappointment, Chee — who's secretary-general of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) — said "there's only so much wallowing you can do".

Once the EBRC report is out, it's a countdown to the General Election. Chee decided, for strategic reasons, to pack up and leave for Sembawang West.

But why Sembawang West? Why not stay in Bukit Batok?

The answer, Chee said on an episode of Mothership's Help Desk podcast, is as simple as this: Time.

Bukit Batok SMC was absorbed into the new Jurong East-Bukit Batok GRC. The new boundaries meant he wasn't familiar with some of the estates, like those in Hong Kah North and Clementi.

"You look at the sheer size of the voters that you've got to reach out to...It makes it very difficult to reach out to voters, especially in the light of the fact that we have all of what, 30 days to campaign," he explains.

"If we had known say three, six months before, it would still be possible."

With Jurong East-Bukit Batok no longer a strategically feasible place for SDP to contest in, Chee chose to return to where the party traditionally campaigned, back in the 2000s: The north.

Chee points out that in 2022, SDP had already announced that it would stand in Sembawang.

The party "made the very natural migration to Sembawang", with Chee at Sembawang West SMC as the "anchor" of their northern strategy.

What he hopes to achieve

From what he's seen on the ground, the profile of voters doesn't seem very different in Sembawang West.

But it's different when it comes to the estate. Sembawang West is a "relatively newer estate compared to Bukit Batok", Chee explains; while Bukit Batok faced problems of age like fires, Sembawang West's biggest problem is space.

"It just struck me as very claustrophobic," he says.

"A resident came up and just told us there's this lack of space, everything's chock-a-block, no open, green spaces where [her children] can play around...it really struck me."

Chee adds that he believes this is a symptom of the wider problem of overcrowding in Singapore, which in turn compromises Singaporeans' mental health.

"Mr Ong Ye Kung, Health Minister and being in that constituency, needs to come out and tell us why the [mental health] situation has gotten so bad.

And has space and overcrowding become a factor, and if it is, how we're going to deal with it going forward."

On other opposition parties

Chee's been a politician with the SDP since 1992. In that time, it's grown; but another opposition party, namely the Workers' Party, has been the one to make it to Parliament.

How does he feel about this?

It's not apples to apples. SDP has always pushed for system reform; and pre-Internet days, it was much more difficult to get this message out to the masses, considering the dominance of government-regulated media.

It was only after the emergence of social media, in the early 2000s, that SDP really started charting in people's peripheries.

Ever since, SDP has been better able to reach out and explain its messaging. "I think we're making inroads," Chee says.

On the WP's success: "You don't try to compare. You run your own race, you've got your own message, you've got your own electorate to think of."

Besides, the campaign period is short. So the party needs to stay focused on itself, and its case, and its game plan.

"If you get distracted by what PAP or WP or whatever other parties are doing, then you're going to find yourself sorry for it," he says.

On his own growth

Ultimately, Chee knows that if he hadn't entered politics in the first place, he might have cut a better deal.

Had he continued with academia — he was a lecturer at the National University of Singapore before joining politics — he might have already retired, or been living a cushy life as a full professor by now.

But "you take it as it comes", he says. Life throws you curveballs; you adapt. That's just being human.

His choice might not make sense in terms of dollars and cents. "But if you look at it in terms of what you've brought to society, the people that you've reached out to and managed to persuade...then of course it's been a lot more gratifying."

Chee's answers turn somewhat vague when he talks about his growth as a politician, and if he regrets his choice. Whether he's changed over the years, whether his views have changed.

But he remembers that when he came in, it was with pure optimism. "You just come in and you say, you can change the world, this and that."

He's never thought it was going to be easy. People would tell him that he would get sacked. He joined the SDP, and things got "very rough" after that.

He was dismissed from NUS in 1993, fell out with the then-SDP secretary-general Chiam See Tong, and was sued for defamation by Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong, leading to his bankruptcy in 2006.

But at that point, there was no going back.

"You've got to stay the course. Because you knew when you got in, things were going to be rough, and now when you're in it, you just cannot bail," he says.

"There were certainly some periods where you question, are we going anywhere?...But then you sit down, you take stock of the situation," he says.

Reading about the people who came before helps, too.

"It equips you to say hey, I'm not the first one to go through this...So in that sense, that mindset, it helps you just go on that little bit more."

Votes and minds

Looking back, Chee doesn't know if he's been successful. Maybe not.

"If you're talking about somebody who's just out there to get votes, then no, I'm not that successful politician," he says.

"But if you're talking about somebody whose wider vision is just to change minds and change society, then that's a very different kind of perspective altogether...History will tell. History will judge."

More importantly though, he believes that even if lightning strikes and he drops dead tonight, the whole process of the liberalisation of Singapore's political system will carry on.

As he sums up what he believes Singapore and Singaporeans will pursue in future, I think — more than anything — it's a reflection of his own deeply held beliefs. His own hopes for his country.

"One day, Singapore will join the ranks of nations that are of peoples that are free and who say, hey, look, we want to chart our destiny. We don't want to keep listening to a small ruling clique that keeps telling us where to go," he says, with absolute conviction.

"Even if we make mistakes, we want to make our own mistakes. But as a people, let us make that decision. Let us make that choice. And then fulfil our own destiny."

Top image from Mothership