Since general election 2015, Dr Chee has swung so far from his old ways that voters cannot help but think that this is his way of trying to cover up his brash misdeeds from the past. None of which Dr Chee has personally apologized for by the way; in his own defense, he has blamed the People's Action Party, biased news reporting and his old mentor Chiam See Tong for everything that has happened to him so far.
In this context, I will list down six things that Dr Chee wishes the average Singaporean voter would forget about him and leave readers to make their own conclusions about the man.
1. Dr Chee Soon Juan was sacked from NUS for dishonesty. He later went on a glucose water "hunger strike", but was discovered to have cheated on his strike by consuming breakfast.
In 1993, Dr Chee inflated taxi money claims of up to $798 and misappropriated $226 worth of research funds from the National University of Singapore, which he used to send his wife's PhD examination papers via courier service to the US. He was fired from his job, a decision which Dr Chee contested bitterly, leading up to a confrontation between him and his head of department for Social Work and Psychology, Dr S Vasoo, who was also a PAP MP for Tanjong Pagar.
Prior to the conflict, Dr Chee had also tried to secretly record a conversation between himself and Dr Vasoo over his decision to join the Singapore Democratic Party, but was caught doing so. Despite being confronted on the spot by Dr Vasoo, Dr Chee vehemently denied taping his superior and claimed that he was taping the conversation for "research" purposes. Even more disturbingly, in the tape that he used to record his conversation with Dr Vasoo, Dr Chee was also found to have secretly recorded an even earlier conversation between himself, Dr Vasoo and other third parties at the university for his own purposes.
Having already broken the trust of his superior with the taping incident, the last straw came when Dr Chee misused the department's research funds. Dr Vasoo informed his superior, Faculty Dean Professor Ernest Chew, and the Vice Chancellor about Dr Chee's dishonesty, which led to Dr Chee's eventual dismissal. Failing to secure his position at NUS, Dr Chee and the SDP then led by Mr Chiam See Tong, blamed the government for dismissing Dr Chee from NUS on politically motivated grounds.
It was at this time that Dr Chee went on his infamous glucose-water-only "hunger strike", when Dr Chee refused all food and drink but resorted to drinking glucose water to sustain himself for 4 days. Ironically, Chinese reporters caught wind that Dr Chee had also broken his strike by consuming a nutritious breakfast prepared by his doting wife every morning at 5.30am before resuming his strike at 6.00am.
A parliamentary hearing over Dr Chee's accusations against the government, which attracted huge public attention because of Dr Chee's hunger strike, put a serious dent into Dr Chee's reputation as a serious politician and left a well-meaning Mr Chiam See Tong red in the face from trying to defend his protege's questionable ethics. Even moderate MPs like Mr Tan Cheng Bock came out openly to condemn Dr Chee's actions.
Taken from Official Reports - Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 13 April 1993, "DISMISSAL OF DR CHEE SOON JUAN"
2. Dr Chee Soon Juan ousted his former mentor Chiam See Tong from the SDP which Chiam had built over 13 years, effectively crippling the rising opposition movement in Singapore.
As if he had not caused his benefactor and mentor enough trouble, Dr Chee, along with other allied members of the SDP Central Executive Committee, successfully ousted Chiam See Tong from his position as secretary-general of his own party in the same year Dr Chee went on his hunger strike.
Following Chiam's failed attempt to defend Dr Chee in parliament, Chiam tried to table an internal party motion for the SDP to criticize Dr Chee's hunger strike as an embarassment to the party's image. Chiam got a rude shock when the CEC, which had become very friendly to the wildly popular Dr Chee, blocked his motion. Realizing that his influence had been usurped, Chiam resigned the same day.
17 years after the fact in 2010, Dr Chee later went public with his own account of how Chiam was thrown out of the SDP, in which he heavily criticized the PAP and Chiam See Tong for blaming him for Chiam's ousting. He labelled Chiam as a difficult and incompetent man who had turned against his own party, conveniently leaving out the fact that Chee had played a direct role in turning Chiam's own CEC against him. Tellingly, having kicked Chiam out of the SDP, Dr Chee's next course of action was to write to the Speaker of Parliament to inform him of Chiam's ousting, an action that would have prompted the Speaker to strip Chiam of his parliamentary seat.
Chiam recalled that in the final SDP disciplinary hearing that led to his expulsion on 28 July 1993, the SDP CEC helmed by Dr Chee had interrogated and challenged Chiam "in random fashion" without according him the dignity or respect of a founding member. The poor handling of that disciplinary hearing eventually helped Chiam win a lawsuit against the SDP for wrongful dismissal. Chiam remained a member of the SDP until 1996 when he set up the Singapore People's Party.
3. Dr Chee Soon Juan was denounced by Chiam See Tong as a "megalomaniac" who was leading the SDP astray.
On 15 September 1996, Dr Chee Soon Juan received a sponsorship to attend an "alternative panel" discussion organized by his mentor, Dr George Crane, at Williams College, United States of America. The panel was set up in opposition to the college's decision to confer an honorary award to Goh Chok Tong, then prime minister of Singapore. As Singapore's model of governance had run afoul of the Human Rights lobby in the United States, sections of the US student body were unhappy that Mr Goh would receive the award.
To express their unhappiness, the alternative panel invited speakers who were critical of Singapore's political and judicial system, including the late dissident in exile Francis Seow. Mr Seow gave a speech accusing the judges of Singapore of being neither "independent nor free", but corrupt and pliant puppets to Lee Kuan Yew. Dr Chee, who was in attendance at Mr Seow's speech, also gave his own speech endorsing Mr Seow's views.
For this, he was roundly chastised by the Singapore parliament, which convened a special session to reaffirm the independence of the judiciary in Singapore. Ironically, it was left to Mr Chiam See Tong once again to point out the errors of his former protege. He had this to say of Dr Chee in his speech to parliament.
"It saddens me that the SDP is now run by a megalomaniac. This man wants centre-stage all the time. I think it is this character which sends him to Williamstown... Mr Speaker, Sir, but what is more important that has happened in Williamstown is that there are certain people there who would like to see Singapore being run down and attacked Singapore. The issue here is not just about people like Chee Soon Juan who come and go in any event but about the survival of Singapore. Singapore's survival is at stake because there is an attack on the basic institution of Singapore and on the system of Singapore. And it is the duty of loyal Opposition to defend Singapore."
4. Dr Chee Soon Juan submitted fabricated statistics to parliament to prove his claims that the government was not providing enough healthcare subsidies.
In August 1996, Dr Chee got himself into another round of trouble when he and three other SDP members were caught submitting false documents to the Parliament's Select Committee tasked with reviewing health care subsidies for public polyclinics and hospitals. Investigators discovered that Dr Chee and his team had put together fabricated data in an earlier report to the Select Committee with the aim of downplaying the amount of subsidies the Singapore government provided for public healthcare. For their actions, Dr Chee and team were censured in parliament and fined a total of US$35,000.
Despite Dr Chee's claims that he had simply misstated his data due to "typographical error", he was again caught out in his lie when the Parliamentary Committee of Privileges tasked with censuring Dr Chee found the same "error" being widely reused in various other publications by Dr Chee, including his book "Dare To Change".
Taken from Official Reports - Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 11 December 1996, "COMMITTEE OF PRIVILEGES REPORT"
5. Dr Chee Soon Juan was widely criticized for being disrespectful after heckling then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong at a walkabout.
In the 2001 Marine Parade by-election, Dr Chee was caught on video heckling then prime minister Goh Chok Tong when the two parties crossed paths while on a walkabout. The scene of Dr Chee shouting into a loud hailer while demanding that Mr Goh explain "Where is the money!?" left Singapore voters with a sour view of Dr Chee's confrontational tactics, which many viewed as gangsterish and a poor reflection of the opposition.
6. SDP revolves around one man: Dr Chee Soon Juan.
In a twist of fate, SDP in recent years has come under fire from former SDP members themselves for exactly the same things he has criticized the late Lee Kuan Yew and his former mentor Chiam See Tong for. In February 2012, a former SDP election candidate Jarrod Luo left the party acrimoniously, leaving a bitter note on his Facebook in which he accused Dr Chee of owing money, bullying a youngster and for being a failed "ideologue" and a "chairman who is not much different from a placeholder".
This was followed closely by the departure of another prominent SDP election candidate Vincent Wijeysingha, who is openly homosexual, in August 2013. In an interview over his departure, Vincent had hinted at the party's inability to push for greater civil liberties for sexual minorities such as himself as it was more focused on economic bread and butter issues.
Taken from Yahoo Singapore news, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/vincent-wijeysingha-resigns-from-singapore-democratic-party-100944974.html
Then in January 2015, yet another prominent SDP campaign strategist left the party, citing Dr Chee's intolerance of internal dissent. He also labelled Chee "stubborn, jealous and egotistical", and chastised Dr Chee for failing to be open minded enough for the SDP to thrive.
Taken from Jeremy Chen's Website, http://jeremy-chen.org/blog/201501/leaving-singapore-democratic-party
These enigmatic resignations of prominent SDP members suggest that ironically, the SDP may be suffering from the same autocratic problems that Dr Chee routinely criticizes the PAP for.
With these six things in mind, we can only conclude that Dr Chee is a deep one. As with all politicians, we will possibly never know if he is truly a changed man. We can only hope that we don't find out the truth only when it's too late.
