Chen Show-Mao, after years of advising on deals like Agricultural Bank of China Ltd.
(1288)’s $22.1 billion initial share sale, has a new
type of offering in the works: His opposition-party candidacy to
join Singapore’s parliament.
“We want to help you to ask the serious questions that will make
our democratic system of government work better,” the head of Davis
Polk & Wardwell LLP’s Beijing office told more than 20,000
people in a suburban Singapore sports stadium in his first campaign
speech last week before the May 7 elections.
A victory by Chen, who is contesting as part of a Workers’
Party team in a district that elects five
representatives as a group, would more than double the number of
opposition seats in parliament. It would also oust Singapore’s
Foreign Minister George Yeo, who is leading the People’s Action
Party candidates in the constituency.
PAP co-founder Lee Kuan Yew has dubbed the 50-year-old lawyer a
“celebrity” who hasn't lived in the country for decades and said
voters will “repent” if they don’t elect the ruling party. The
PAP’s 52-year stretch in government has made the country Asia’s richest per capita.
Opposition parties, which previously haven’t run enough
candidates to prevent the PAP from returning to power on nomination
day, are challenging 82 of 87 seats this year.
While analysts including Lim Jit Soon, Nomura Securities’
Singapore research head, said they expect another clear victory for
the PAP, which won 67 percent of the vote in the 2006 poll and all
but 2 of the seats in parliament, they said a reduced popular vote
could see some policy changes.
“If the PAP achieves a significantly reduced popular vote it may
look to review some of its policies like immigration,” Lim said in
a strategy note titled ‘Times they are a-changin.’
Foreigners make up 36 percent of Singapore’s 5.1
million population, up from 14 percent in 1990, boosting
the economy and creating jobs for Singaporeans, the government
says.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said last month that investments
such as a new $3 billion memory chip plant built by Intel Corp. and
Micron Technology Inc. wouldn’t have been possible without foreign
workers. Opposition parties have questioned if growth is being
pursued at too high a cost by letting too many foreigners in.
“How many hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to bring in
every year is enough?” Chen asked in his April 28 rally speech to
roars of approval. He declined to be interviewed for this
story.
Chen himself is a “success story” of Singapore’s immigration
policy, Law Minister K. Shanmugam said April 29. Chen came to Singapore from Taiwan with his
parents and younger sister when he was 11 in 1972. He has spent the
last 30 years overseas.
He graduated with an economics degree from Harvard, won a Rhodes
Scholarship to Oxford and got his law doctorate from Stanford
University before joining Davis
Polk in New York in
1992.
PAP leaders such as organizing secretary Ng Eng Hen have asked
if Chen can identify with the aspirations of Singaporeans after
spending most of his life overseas.
“I’ve spent all this time abroad, but that doesn’t mean I stop
being Singaporean,” he said when announcing his candidacy last
week.
Chen, who took Singapore nationality in 1986 after serving in
the country’s army, said living elsewhere “enhanced rather than
diluted” his sense of being Singaporean.
Chen’s work at Davis Polk included advising Cnooc Ltd.
(883) on its $18.5 billion bid for Unocal Corp. and the
global IPOs of companies including Industrial & Commercial Bank of China
(601398) Ltd., Air
China Ltd. (601111), China
Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (600028) and China
Unicom Hong Kong Ltd. (762)
The American Lawyer magazine, a trade publication, named him one
of its dealmakers of 2010 for managing the
Agricultural Bank IPO, which was underwritten by investment banks
that included Goldman Sachs Group
Inc. (GS) and Morgan Stanley.
(MS)
“In the second half of my life, I would like to give something
back to my country,” Chen said at his nomination announcement,
adding that he planned to relocate his wife and three children to
Singapore from Beijing regardless of whether he gets elected.
Chen will be retiring from Davis Polk, Hong Kong-based partner
William Barron said. “We appreciate all of his efforts at the firm
and wish him all the best of luck.”
Davis Polk is a firm where public service has been part of the
culture, said Anthony Root, who first met Chen when they opened the
firm’s Hong Kong
office in 1993.
“It’s a good thing for Singapore to have someone with his
international experience, integrity and quiet wisdom offering to
serve,” said Root, who now heads Asia for Milbank, Tweed, Hadley
& McCloy LLP.
Chen is putting a lot on the line, said Wilson Ang, a
Singapore-based corporate lawyer who got to know him when both
worked for different international firms in Hong Kong. “Politics is
a rough and tumble game.”
Two lawyers with Singapore law firms who previously ran as
Workers’ Party candidates have been sued for defamation by PAP
leaders. A third was fined for tax evasion
after the election.
Tang Liang Hong, who contested the 1997 elections, was ordered
to pay a record S$8 million ($6.5 million) for defaming 11 PAP
members including then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and Lee Kuan Yew,
the father of the current premier who led the PAP to eight election victories before stepping
down in 1990. The amount was later reduced to S$3.6 million.
Tang’s wife, who was named as a defendant in the lawsuits, was
bankrupted and is still paying the debt, Tang said from Melbourne,
where he now lives.
The PAP says Singapore’s rules and laws are transparent and
rejects suggestions that it uses defamation suits to dissuade
political opposition.
“It is a pattern because there is a pattern amongst the
opposition leaders to accuse us of wrongdoing,” Goh said in a
September 2003 interview with the BBC. “It’s a
pattern for us to restore the harm that they have done to our
reputation.”
At his nomination announcement, Chen said he was aware of the
need to be as careful as possible in formulating his public
comments.
Lee Kuan Yew, the oldest member of Singapore’s cabinet at 87, has said
the ruling party would accept the loss of the Aljunied district
Chen is contesting. At the same time, he added that its voters have
to accept the consequences of choosing a team including a
“celebrity who has been away 30 years.”
“If Aljunied decides to go that way, well Aljunied has five
years to live and repent,” he said, adding that property values in
the district may fall with the PAP government prioritizing
districts it wins for improvements.
Singapore is tolerant and open enough for a voice like Chen’s,
said Eduardo Ramos-Gomez, managing partner of Duane Morris LLP’s
Asian offices.
“He’s committed to the cause and believes that he can present a
different dialogue and view to Singapore,” said Ramos-Gomez, who
has served with Chen on the
advisory board of the Singapore Management University
School of Law since 2007 and was Mexico’s ambassador to the city
state.
