Dr Chee Soon Juan, Secretary-General of the Singapore Democratic Party and candidate for the Bukit Batok SMC by-election answered questions posed by the press at the mediastop after his walkabout at the Bukit Batok Market, about his stance on being a full-time Member of Parliament should he be elected.
What are the things that Dr Chee feels need to be done so as to be there every single day as a full-time MP
But in general, it is the same problem anybody needs to go to the office everyday. Correct?
You go to the office everyday because there will be problems coming up and you need to solve them and need to spend time to be able to take care of all these problems. It is the same thing, right?
When residents are here that you need to be able to talk to them, be their friend. Sometimes it is not just them asking, can you do this for me, or can you do that for me.
Sometimes their problem is beyond..they just want to have a listening ear and let’s just see, let’s just discuss. And can you do that over a couple of hours, meet the people session?
There is another thing that I want to raise as well. Meet the people session should not be just once a week, people have come up to me and say, we get to wait an hour, two hours just to see the MP.
Why?
Is it something that the MP is in such demand that people have to wait so long?
No.
The reason why they are waiting so long is because the MP has no other time. They come only once a week. Not good. not good.
We want to make ourselves avaliable, more than once a week.
Have the time when people can come down and say, I have this problem, I don’t have to wait that two hours just to see you
So these are the things we must commit our time, make the decision to commit the time, commit to the interest of our people.
How many meet-the-people session per week does Dr Chee think is enough.
It really depends on the demand of the people. But I can tell you from what I have heard so far. One time is not enough.
Once is not enough.
And it is something that you need, you are here. You are paid 15, 16 thousand dollars a month alright? And you want to hold the MPS, meet-the-people session once a week?
And then you come down on a Sunday, you come down on a Saturday, you have breakfast here, you go around and you say, “Ho Bo, Ho Bo, Ho Bo, Ho Bo” – (Hokkien for “Are you ok?”)
For 16 thousand dollars? No.
You got to do more than that so this is what we want to tell our residents here . They don’t understand what a real MP is, they haven’t seen what MPs in other countries, how they serve the people.
Here, we tell them once a week, meet the people session. 15 thousand dollars? Good? PAP says every good, oh very good.
Everybody don’t understand you see. They don’t understand that it is not good.
But you wait, you wait till you elect me into parliament. Let me be your MP. I will show you what a real MP should be doing.
So this is why we want to continue to tell the people, the voters and ask them to be distracted and make sure we focus on who can be the better MP and the better representative for them
