PAP introducing its greedy bunch

Economist among likely PAP men for next GE



Toh Yong Chuan
The Straits Times
Monday, Apr 21, 2014

SINGAPORE - Two potential People's Action Party (PAP) candidates for the Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC team in the next General Election were spotted yesterday.

They are 48-year-old Chong Kee Hiong, chief executive of Singapore Exchange-listed OUE Hospitality Trust, and 41-year-old Saktiandi Supaat, a former Monetary Authority of Singapore economist now heading the foreign exchange research team at Maybank.

The duo were among Bishan-Toa Payoh grassroots leaders who accompanied Dr Ng Eng Hen when the Defence Minister opened a newly renovated Residents' Committee Centre at Toa Payoh East.

Dr Ng, the ward's anchor minister, described the pair as among "many" potential candidates who are already active on the ground across Singapore, well ahead of the next GE which must be held before January 2017.

The move was in response to Singaporeans' feedback after the 2011 GE, said the PAP organising secretary. "Many Singaporeans said that they prefer candidates who spent some time on the ground before elections come."

It will also allow potential candidates time to get to know residents, and residents can decide whether the new faces can serve them better, said Dr Ng.

Both Mr Chong and Mr Saktiandi are newly minted grassroots leaders at the Toa Payoh East and Bishan East Citizens' Consultative Committees, but they also do other volunteer work.

Mr Saktiandi was president of the youth wing of self-help group Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP) for three years, from 2011 to January.

The father of three young children said he is passionate about, among other issues, the low-income group, broken families and households whose main breadwinners are in prison.

Mr Chong is a familiar face in corporate circles. The accountancy graduate was the chief financial officer of international hotel chain Raffles Holdings and senior executive in the Ascott group, including its chief executive from 2012 to 2013, before joining OUE Hospitality Trust last year.

The father of four boys aged between eight and 16 said that volunteer work takes up at least two nights a week, but he has the full support of his wife, who is a housewife.

Mr Chong is also active in the labour movement, serving as president of the union-linked Orchid Country Club and president of the NTUC Foodfare cooperative.

Both new faces are also helping out at the PAP's weekly meet-the-people session at Bishan-Toa Payoh on Tuesdays.

While both were not shy about speaking to reporters, they gave similar answers on their prospects of being picked as PAP candidates, saying that "it is up to the party to decide".

Mr Chong added with a smile: "It is too early to ask, right? My focus now is to get to know residents and the ground."

BORING!

As always ST is on the ball with potential candidates.

Love the PAP...Those who Oppose will be Poor and Outcasts!

ILovePAP said:

Sinkies Love Prosperity Politics!!! Huat Ah!

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Sure or not?

ILovePAP said:

Love the PAP...Those who Oppose will be Poor and Outcasts!

Click to expand...

The Poor and the Outcast will end the misery of the PAP.

has he done NSF?

Check out his credential and expose him to netizens to evaluate before pass to the mass.

winnipegjets said:

Economist among likely PAP men for next GE

Toh Yong Chuan
The Straits Times
Monday, Apr 21, 2014

SINGAPORE - Two potential People's Action Party (PAP) candidates for the Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC team in the next General Election were spotted yesterday.

They are 48-year-old Chong Kee Hiong, chief executive of Singapore Exchange-listed OUE Hospitality Trust, and 41-year-old Saktiandi Supaat, a former Monetary Authority of Singapore economist now heading the foreign exchange research team at Maybank.

The duo were among Bishan-Toa Payoh grassroots leaders who accompanied Dr Ng Eng Hen when the Defence Minister opened a newly renovated Residents' Committee Centre at Toa Payoh East.

Dr Ng, the ward's anchor minister, described the pair as among "many" potential candidates who are already active on the ground across Singapore, well ahead of the next GE which must be held before January 2017.

The move was in response to Singaporeans' feedback after the 2011 GE, said the PAP organising secretary. "Many Singaporeans said that they prefer candidates who spent some time on the ground before elections come."

It will also allow potential candidates time to get to know residents, and residents can decide whether the new faces can serve them better, said Dr Ng.

Both Mr Chong and Mr Saktiandi are newly minted grassroots leaders at the Toa Payoh East and Bishan East Citizens' Consultative Committees, but they also do other volunteer work.

Mr Saktiandi was president of the youth wing of self-help group Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP) for three years, from 2011 to January.

The father of three young children said he is passionate about, among other issues, the low-income group, broken families and households whose main breadwinners are in prison.

Mr Chong is a familiar face in corporate circles. The accountancy graduate was the chief financial officer of international hotel chain Raffles Holdings and senior executive in the Ascott group, including its chief executive from 2012 to 2013, before joining OUE Hospitality Trust last year.

The father of four boys aged between eight and 16 said that volunteer work takes up at least two nights a week, but he has the full support of his wife, who is a housewife.

Mr Chong is also active in the labour movement, serving as president of the union-linked Orchid Country Club and president of the NTUC Foodfare cooperative.

Both new faces are also helping out at the PAP's weekly meet-the-people session at Bishan-Toa Payoh on Tuesdays.

While both were not shy about speaking to reporters, they gave similar answers on their prospects of being picked as PAP candidates, saying that "it is up to the party to decide".

Mr Chong added with a smile: "It is too early to ask, right? My focus now is to get to know residents and the ground."

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How do you know if a Malay-Muslim is a PAP supporter? Simple, check whether he/she is a member of the Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP).

The PAP, still elitist as ever.

Anyway, Chong should be Ah Wong's replacement. Saktiandi likely to be sent somewhere else.

People who are concerned about the needy,broken families and underprivileged would join the wp not the freaking Pay and Pay.

Wrong, people who are really concerned about those issue will not even join politics.

Politician just talk and hope that their dicks will be satisfied. They dun do shit.

frenchbriefs said:

People who are concerned about the needy,broken families and underprivileged would join the wp not the freaking Pay and Pay.

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winnipegjets said:

The Poor and the Outcast will end the misery of the PAP.

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Hang the PAP bastards and their collaborators from piano wires dangling them from lamp posts to dance and dance or BBQ them all.
True justice be given to them or they be given to justice one way or other.

To me, not impt what his profession is, or what fuck qualifications. Most impt of all, I will ask him - how he plans to conduct checks and balances if I vote for him.

Told you guys my ketchup very strong. Now must leave and join private sector earlier and not a few days before elections. Also must be in political bodies in official capacity. The fear of another Lee Li Lian has gripped the PAP by the balls.

Will it work.

My first prediction - in 2015, they will ask the Philippines Embassy to hold their Independence Day celebration indoors and make sure it hits the press.

Yes, 100%. Totally a captured entity.

laksaboy said:

How do you know if a Malay-Muslim is a PAP supporter? Simple, check whether he/she is a member of the Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP).

Click to expand...

Dont worry me n my neighbirs will not votr for these useless buggers.

Lesson on how to write propaganda sheet for the govt.

"They are 48-year-old Chong Kee Hiong, chief executive of Singapore Exchange-listed OUE Hospitality Trust."

Note it is not CEO of OUE Hospitality Trust which is unheard entity that nobody gives a fuck except for the OUE part. It is also not CEO of listed company, OUE Hospitality Trust.

Might as well write CEO of world renowned KPMG audited company OUE Hospitality Trust. Clutching at straws?

Holy Fuck!! We got another can't-afford-to-buy chopstick story on the way. Son of shoe seller, no bed so slept on sofa, gave away prize to second highest scoring classmate, packed lunch to school, planted padi at night, caught fish in longkang, etc etc , you get the picture.


The son of a shoe seller, Mr Chong Kee Hiong is the only graduate in his family. He became an accountant and is now the chief executive of The Ascott, the world's largest serviced residence owner-operator. -- ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM
By Wong Kim Hoh

Background story

A hero's path

'The heroes will always prevail although they have to undergo a lot of hardships first.' - Mr Chong Kee Hiong, on how sword-fighting novels moulded his mindset as a child

Value of respect

'Respect is important because when people lose respect for you, they can do a lot to undermine you.' - Mr Chong, on the art of managing people

Wong Kim Hoh meets...

Chong Kee Hiong

When he was in Primary 5, Chong Kee Hiong scored the highest marks for mathematics and Chinese.



But his teacher at the now defunct Kim Keat Primary School told him he had won one prize too many and gave the maths award to another pupil who had finished half a mark behind.

'I didn't argue with the teacher but I was very upset,' recalls the chief executive of serviced residences operator The Ascott. 'The fact that I still remember it with such clarity shows that I am still disturbed by it.'

The episode goes against the ideals of fair play and meritocracy which he holds dear. After all, he says, Singapore's meritocratic system made it possible for the son of a poor shoe seller to make good and become head honcho of the world's largest owner-operator of serviced apartments.

He was the youngest of 11 children, and the family got by on the meagre earnings of his late father, who ran a small footwear stall in the Bendemeer market.

Home was a Housing Board rental flat in Toa Payoh.

'There were just two bedrooms. All the boys slept in one room; all the girls and my paternal grandma slept in the other. My parents slept in the living room,' he recalls.

He ended up in the living room too, and the sofa was his bed for several years until his teens.

Life was not easy and money was often tight. The children had to help out at their father's stall on weekends, and their mother sometimes had to borrow from her parents to help tide over tough times.

'Being the youngest, I probably had it better than my siblings. But to save money, I packed food from home to school,' he recalls.

Mr Chong, 46, reckons he was aware of his poverty from a young age and probably nursed a subconscious desire to improve his lot in life from the time he was in primary school.

He remembers that when he was in Primary 1, he was called up, along with a couple of other small, skinny pupils, to stand in front of the class.

'The teacher asked us what milk we drank. I don't think she was out to embarrass us, she just wanted to know why we were small,' he recalls.

'But it wasn't a nice feeling to be singled out, and made to feel deprived.'

Fortunately, he is stoic. It's a quality he thinks he developed from voraciously devouring Chinese sword-fighting novels by some of the genre's most loved writers, such as Jin Yong, Gu Long and Liang Yusheng, as a child.

'In these novels, the heroes will always prevail although they have to undergo a lot of hardships first,' he says with hearty laugh.

'Also, in many of the stories, skilful pugilists and old masters would impart their skills only if the heroes showed great perseverance and sincerity, so I told myself I needed to have those qualities too.'

He is a self-starter in more ways than one.

Blessed with the smarts, he never gave his parents any angst over his schoolwork. In fact, his education was practically self-financed.

'I collected a bit of money from clan associations in the form of bursaries in primary school. I would pass all of it to my mother,' he recalls.

Mr Chong, who attended Raffles Institution and Raffles Junior College, received three scholarship offers when he got into the National University of Singapore.

Although he initially wanted to study engineering, he settled on accountancy and accepted a scholarship - which paid $5,000 a year - from auditing giant KPMG.

'It was the mid-1980s and there was a recession. An engineering course would have taken four years instead of three and engineering graduates were also finding it difficult to get a job then,' recalls Mr Chong.

'I needed to earn money fast; I wanted to be more financially independent for myself and family.'

He gave tuition to help finance his university studies, and is the only graduate in his family.

Right after graduating in 1990, he started work as a graduate assistant with KPMG. Besides providing a good grounding in business processes and management, the job also honed his emotional intelligence as he audited the likes of clients like Citibank.

'No client likes auditors and you have to have certain skill sets to let them know you're not out to 'sabo' them,' he says, using the colloquial term for sabotage.

He stayed for four years, during which he was promoted to senior supervisor, before joining one of Singapore's best-known architectural firms RSP as finance manager. He went on to become its financial controller.

He stayed at RSP for two years. By then, married to Monica, a colleague from KPMG, he told himself that his resume would look more impressive if he had overseas exposure.

The opportunity came when he joined Tuan Sing Holdings, which has businesses in, among others, property development and hotels.

He was sent to Shanghai in 1997 to oversee finance and administration, and was among the first wave of Singaporean expatriates based in the Chinese city.

'The expatriate life was quite good in those days... For instance, you paid a bit more but you could get doctors to come and see you, not the other way round,' he says with a laugh.

But there were also challenges, such as business practices being not quite endorsed in Singapore. Corporate governance, for example, was given short shrift by many companies.

Tuan Sing, he says, was one of the few companies which paid full taxes then.

'A lot of people asked, 'Why do that?' and told us how we could get around it. We said no, and we made sure we stuck to it.

'I said it might work to our disadvantage in the short run but, in the long run, our reputation would be good.

'People came to respect us for that. We are a listed company, we didn't want it to be a problem. Respect is important because when people lose respect for you, they can do a lot to undermine you.'

He says China changed as it went from strength to strength as an economic powerhouse.

'Things are much better now. The country's more open and it treats everyone much fairer now,' he says.

After his Shanghai sojourn, he had a brief stint as a senior vice-president in an IT company before entering the hospitality industry in 2001.

He joined Raffles Holdings as chief financial officer when it was in the midst of acquiring Swissotel for 410 million Swiss francs.

He moved over to The Ascott - a subsidiary of real estate giant CapitaLand - as deputy chief executive officer three years later.

He played a key role in the successful listing of subsidiary Ascott Reit, the world's first Pan-Asian serviced residence real estate investment trust, in 2006.

The unit invests primarily in real estate and real estate-related assets which are income-producing and used mainly as serviced residences or rental housing properties.

'The Reit market was fairly new then; even the serviced-residence asset class was relatively unknown,' he says.

Mr Chong charted Ascott Reit's business, investment and operational strategies until he became Ascott's head honcho this year. Its asset size has tripled since its listing to $2.81 billion with 65 properties in 24 cities.

Ms Lee Sze Yeng, a KPMG partner, has known Mr Chong since 1991 when he was her senior at the accounting firm.

'I've seen him moving into different jobs and doing well in each. It's to do with his character. He enjoys challenges and is not contented with doing the same thing.'

She adds: 'People see accountants as square but he has very sharp business sense and a very commercial perspective on things.'

Meritocracy, says Mr Chong, is his key guiding principle as a corporate leader.

'I believe we should be objective and fair by rewarding people based on the results they achieve. When people see that they are rewarded based on a fair system, they will be naturally motivated to do their best.'

Life has turned out well for the affable man.

He and his family live in a semi-detached house in Bishan, he drives a Mercedes convertible and has made some prudent investments.

He throws out a Chinese adage when asked if he has had any disappointments in life: 'Zi yu yang er qin bu zai'. It expresses a son's regret at not being able to look after his parents in their old age.

'I'm now in a position to look after my father but he is no longer around,' he says. His father died in 1985 while he was in national service.

But he says he will do his best for his mother, who is 85 years old and lives with him.

Success, however, has not made him forget his roots.

Last November, he took his wife, two of their four sons and one of his brothers to visit his father's village in Meixian, in Guangdong province.

His father was the second of five children, the only son, and never returned to his ancestral village after coming to Singapore as a young man in the 1940s, although his widowed mother joined him here later.

For Mr Chong, the trip to his father's village proved to be an emotional experience.

'There I saw the house that he shared with five other families. I was told that he walked six hours from his village to the pier to take the ship to Singapore and that was the last they saw of him,' he says.

He met everyone in the village, hosted a lunch for 80 people, and visited his grandfather's grave.

He also met his only surviving aunt, the youngest of his father's four sisters, who is now in her 80s.

'The moment I saw her, I knew she was my aunt. She looked like my father and her mannerisms were like my grandma's. She would hold my hands while talking to me.

'It was amazing, and not at all awkward,' he says.

He intends to revisit soon and to take with him his other children and siblings.

Having experienced a childhood where many things were beyond his means, he says he is tempted to give his four sons - aged between six and 14 - more than what they need.

But he and his wife decided it is more important to instil in them the right values, the drive to do well and to work for what they want.

Not too long ago, his wife told him that their second son had been going to the school bookshop, looking longingly at some of the items which he could not afford with his pocket money.

'We give him just enough pocket money for food during recess,' he says. 'So when I heard it, I felt a pinch of sadness.

'But I had to remind myself that there is a bigger lesson that my boy will have to learn and understand eventually.'

And that is, if you work hard, have the desire to do well and grab opportunities given to you, you will do well.

That, he says, is the beauty of meritocracy.

[email protected]

Can he do the half fuck hip hop dance or not ?

what a sob story, hoping the electorate will buy the story of rags to riches. I think the electorate would prefer the rags-and-still-rags story like Lee Li Lian. At least they know the person they vote for is not out of touch with them.