While I read Bernard Chen's life story, then realised that he was to be fielded in MacPherson and up against Tin Pei Ling, the stark contrast between the two candidates' backgrounds made me laugh and cry.
Their stories explain the theory of cumulative inequalities so well.
(A) We are all familiar with TPL.
Life has dealt TPL a good set of cards.
In a nutshell, TPL is the only daughter of coffee shop owners. Her arguably upper middle class family, with its concentrated resources, afforded her a stable environment to blossom in. She did well enough to move from Crescent Girls to Hwa Chong, then to NUS.
Later, because of the opportunities she has been blessed with, she met and secured her future husband, the director of the department in a government ministry during her internship. By then, he had already been PPS to Prime Minister Lee. Today, he is one of the top officers in the elite Administrative Service.
As such, in terms of household status, TPL is within the top few % in Singapore, even without taking her MP allowance into consideration. She exists amongst the elite.
In GE2011, TPL was fielded in Marine Parade GRC, even though voters couldn't tell why she should be fielded. PM Lee tried to speak up for her, saying that because she had helped out at her parents' coffee shop, that she knew poverty. O_o
Despite making a false declaration in her nomination form, she was not penalised, and was allowed to carry on with her GE2011 campaign.
Upon 'winning' GE2011, she quit her job to 'dedicate her time' to MacPherson.
However, as I have put forth earlier, a MP without a day job does not mean that the MP is spending all his/her time as MP.
He/she may be doing other stuff which are not uploaded to Facebook for your reading convenience and his/her political convenience.
E.g. TPL was pregnant for the past 10 months.
E.g. TPL completed a Masters from 2013 to 2015.
I am told that this Executive Masters programme admits executives with substantial years of experience (TPL only has 4 years of work experience at point of application), and costs around SGD185,000 (the price of a 3-room BTO HDB flat in a mature estate).
In summary, Lady Luck smiles upon TPL... alot.
More here -
http://blinkymummy.blogspot.sg/2015/09/son-of-coffeeshop-runner-v-daughter-of.html