GE2025: PAP’s Lee Hong Chuang banks on decades of grassroots experience in bid to enter Parliament
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PAP's Jurong East-Bukit Batok GRC candidate Lee Hong Chuang on a walkabout at a coffee shop in Bukit Batok on April 26.
ST PHOTO: MICHELLE NG
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SINGAPORE – He may become a first-time MP at age 55 after this general election, but Mr Lee Hong Chuang said he is not a novice in helping residents solve their problems.
He said he has decades of volunteering experience and has been a PAP activist since 2004. Mr Lee also contested, and lost, in the last two general elections as the PAP candidate for the Hougang single seat.
The former national gymnast is part of the ruling party’s Jurong East-Bukit Batok GRC team
Asked about the move from Hougang to the group representation constituency, Mr Lee said: “I think the party would actually deploy us to whichever area that best suits us, to position us to (where) we can help the community the most. That is my thinking.”
While he may be a new face in the GRC for now, Mr Lee said he brings with him 30 years of community volunteering experience to help residents resolve their issues.
“I may not have ‘official political experience’, but whatever I am doing, other than not going to Parliament, I am doing it as if I am one of (the elected MPs),” he said before an evening walkabout in Bukit Batok on April 26.
He said he is able to “go into deeper conversations” with residents on the issues they face when he walks the ground, because he prefers to go on walkabouts alone. The absence of an entourage of volunteers, he believes, would put residents more at ease.
When he comes across issues that he feels require immediate attention, Mr Lee said, he would want to act on them immediately. “They must be able to know that there are people who really care for them, and there are things that they can look forward to, and not like ‘I told you something and I don’t hear from you’,” said Mr Lee, who works for an information technology multinational corporation.
He added that he takes time to explain to residents why some requests, such as for infrastructural upgrades, may take time, or why they should participate in national schemes such as SkillsFuture.
Mr Lee said the nine days of election campaigning are “a crash course” and he has been walking the ground, even visiting the same coffee shop at different times of the day to catch different crowds.
He is among only a handful of non-incumbent PAP candidates in this election who are 50 or older, with the majority in their 30s or 40s. If elected, he believes that being in the “50s is a good time to start” as an MP, as “everything has stabilised”.
Mr Lee noted that people in their 20s may need to focus on building their careers, while those in their 30s may also need to juggle their families, children and duties as an elected representative.
“My kids are grown up and in their 20s, so I don’t have to be too worried about them, and I have the privilege of having more time to focus on the community,” he said.
