User:Ethereal/Tin Pei Ling

Tin Pei Ling is a Chinese Singaporean who is one of five Singapore People's Action Party Members of Parliament for the Marine Parade Group Representation Constituency. In addition to being the youngest MP, she was the PAP's youngest candidate in the Singapore general election, 2011, and was Singapore's youngest candidate for that election until the National Solidarity Party announced the nomination of Nicole Seah for the same constituency. She is currently serving as the assistant treasurer for YoungPAP, the PAP's youth wing. Her husband, Ng How Yue, is the Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister.

thumb|right|Online backlash to Tin Pei Ling's candidacy online grew so immense that it attracted [[The New Paper's sensationalistic coverage in the print media. (The New Paper is a subsidiary of state-owned press company Singapore Press Holdings.)]]

Politics
A member of the Ulu Pandan branch of the YoungPAP for 7 years, she was originally fielded by the PAP as a candidate to attract the "unpredictable" youth vote via facebook and YouTube, but this effort backfired and resulted in a large backlash online from all Singaporeans but young Singaporeans especially. According to the Asia Sentinel, Tin Pei Ling "suffers from a real lack of substance and meaning". Her campaign statements focused on "stability" and "hard work" without identifying particular policies of importance. This interpretation reached leading Italian newspaper La Stampa's international section, saying Tin Pei Ling lacks "sostanza e spessore".

thumb|right|350px|Tin Pei Ling's "[[Kate Spade" pose was widely mocked online and became so infamous even among the state press that MediaCorp magazine 8 Days released an issue on April 21 2011 where actor Tay Ping Hui (also a YPAP member ) mocked her pose, recognising the image's impact upon the election. ]]

She faced widespread ridicule due to various incidents with the press. After being asked if there was a PAP policy she would change, she faced widespread ridicule for replying that there were no PAP policies she felt strongly against. When asked what her "greatest regret" was, she said it was not having brought her (still living) parents to Universal Studios Singapore. As the PAP Marine Parade GRC team made their post-nomination speeches to the crowd on Nomination Day on April 27, Tin Pei Ling was greeted with cries of "Kate Spade!" and "Universal Studios" as she made her speech. The "Kate Spade" cry was a reference to a widely-circulated facebook photo of her "act cute" pose with a Kate Spade-branded gift from her husband, which led to widespread accusations online of ignorance, materialism and privilege.

Part of many Singaporeans' concerns was that although it was evidently obvious that Tin Pei Ling was not deemed suitable to be a Member of Parliament, she had a high chance of being "elected" due to Singapore's Group Representative Constituency system by "riding on the coattails" of fellow Marine Parade GRC candidate former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, since the 5-member PAP team would be voted in or rejected as a group.

The public hostility to her online has been so great that her team comrade Goh Chok Tong was forced to defend her in the press. He said he had taken Tin Pei Ling when Lee Hsien Loong had offered to field her in his GRC and he did not think Tin Pei Ling was a weak candidate, and that she had been recommended by two PAP MPs. He dismissed the online criticisms as merely "distortion" and while admitting that though "some sound bites ... pitted her as a rather light-weight person", this was "a superficial view" and he still believed that she "[could] reach out to the young, and the not so young," and that and in particular, he "would like her to do more to help the old people in MacPherson." Lee Hsien Loong dismissed the widespread criticism of her online as "flaming" and did not think it "raised the quality of the debate". He believed that with her willingness to "work very hard" he was confident that she would become "a good MP in due course".

Tin also rebutted a suggestion that she got into politics through the back door because her husband, 40 year-old Ng How Yue is the Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

On Election Day, the People's Action Party carried Marine Parade GRC with 56.65% of votes, ensuring that Tin will enter parliament. SM Goh Chok Tong openly admitted after election that Tin Pei Ling's youth and perceived negative public image was a "factor" for the People's Action Party's weaker performance at Marine Parade GRC.

Cooling-off day controversy
The NSP team in Marine Parade GRC, led by Nicole Seah, filed a complaint to the Elections Department on 6 May stating Tin Pei Ling had violated the state-mandated cooling-off period 24 hours before polls by posting a Facebook comment on an issue related to Seah. When questioned, Tin replied that one of her administrators, Denise He, had posted the comment not her from her phone, and that Denise had mean to post in her own capacity from her phone, but had forgotten to log out of Tin's account. The NSP team was advised by the Elections Department to file a police report before the Elections Department could investigate. Independent investigators for independent Singaporean news website Temasek Review noted that according to Tin Pei Ling's publicly available nomination forms on the Election Departments website, Tin Pei Ling was listed as the sole approved moderator/administrator of her facebook profile.

Education
Tin was educated at Crescent Girls' School, where she was Crescentian of the Year 2000. She subsequently studied at Hwa Chong Junior College.

Tin graduated with a Bachelor of Social Sciences honours degree in psychology from the National University of Singapore.