A while ago, Sun Xueling found a card on her bedside table.
It read: "Flowers bloom for no one, yet they still bloom." The card was from her older daughter, aged 12.
As Minister of State for Home Affairs, Sun has represented Singapore on the international stage. Her portfolio is in scams and transnational affairs; her overseas counterparts, overwhelmingly, are men.
She asked: "When you are out there, as a woman, are you going to be soft, fluffy? Are you going to be helpless?"
"No," she insists. In this, she believes in the importance of Singapore's education system, in raising confident young women with a strong sense of identity.
"You have to know your stuff. You have to stand your ground. You have to speak to people, and people have to respect you for who you are, and the country that you represent."
Wishes to be known for her advocacy for children and young families
When she first joined politics, her looks and style caught people's attention.
But 10 years on, Sun hopes that she will be better known for her community advocacy, particularly for children and young families in Punggol.
She started The Lighthouse, a "safe space" in Punggol which hosts social programmes for youths and children. She's also known for her Facebook storytimes — videos in which she reads aloud from children's storybooks.
Her aim was to tell children and young people "that you matter and you are good enough", and that "you are unique, you are special and you are loved".
It would be an easy mistake, one I might have made myself, to interpret these Facebook storytimes and community initiatives as things that are low-stakes, trivial. Even frivolous.
But something that Sun says strikes me hard.
"I think what's important, and I see that as a role of a Member of Parliament and as a grassroots advisor, is that we are able to galvanise community resources, to fill in little gaps on the ground whereby it might not be served by mainstream government policies," she explains.
When I make the trek across the island to Punggol for our interview, I'm greeted by a town filled with HDB flats that resemble condominiums. Construction projects everywhere. Lush greenery, carefully considered for shade and beauty.
Surely it's not as dramatic as an amended law or an earthshaking new economic policy.
But minor as it might be, it matters to residents. So it matters to her.
A tough contest
And yet — it's not news that Punggol GRC is poised for a tough contest in the days ahead.
A new constituency, in an area where the WP has staked a claim as part of its "eastern expansion", against a rival slate of polished and well-spoken new faces.
It's an uncanny parallel of what happened in Sengkang five years ago, with the WP's slate of contenders there.
With the big day looming so close, I ask Sun if she has anything to tell her residents and voters.
"I'd like to think, track record matters," she says wryly; and yet she admits that she doesn't know if it'll end up convincing the people.
But what she does want to put across is this: Political inclinations aside, how residents have interpreted her efforts aside, she's really tried her best.
"This is very important to me. I have heard you," she says emphatically.
"I read my emails, I have my conversations. I'm present here, I'm here very, very often. It's not possible for me not to have heard.
But the proposal about how to solve it may or may not meet the expectations of each person."
She offers a "chicken brood" situation in a Punggol HDB estate as an example of an ongoing issue she's not yet fully resolved.
The estate is very divided about the chickens, she says. Some estates love them; some hate them.
"So in some areas, I catch the chickens, and then I get scolded by residents who actually love the chickens. [If I don't] then the residents are like, don't you know that there are chickens?"
"I know that there are chickens! When I got here, I literally saw the chicken cross the road! I know," she says, with no small amount of animation.
"But to the resident, it's just, why is that rooster not yet removed?"
It's with a perfectionist's lens, a critic's really, that she looks around and seems to overlook all her successes.
Instead she talks about all she hasn't done. The frustration of imperfection.
I've done my best, my conscience is clear: Sun
Sun said that she is on the ground four to five days a week. She's been a grassroots leader since she was 20 years old.
With her passion for children and the community, it'd be easy to dismiss her as just another warm, maternal lawmaker with a comfortable party majority. "Soft and fluffy", in her own words.
But Sun is a veteran politician in every sense of the word, even if she doesn't always appear the part.
In 2020, Sun scored a strong win, clinching 60.97 per cent of the votes for the newly carved out Punggol West SMC, successfully defending her seat against Tan Chen Chen of the Workers' Party (WP) who secured 39.03 per cent.
It was PAP's best electoral result against WP in GE 2020.
But it's a vicious cycle. As a woman in politics, you have to smile or you're labelled cold and unlikeable. But if you smile, you're dismissed as flighty and shallow.
There's no winning. But in the end, it really doesn't matter.
Sun is fighting tears by the end of the interview, and I sense they're more frustrated tears than anything else, as she tries to explain to me everything she's been doing.
How she gives her all to solve every resident's problems; what an impossible task it is. How much she values the work she's doing; how difficult it is to be taken seriously.
I'm reminded of the line about flowers blooming for no one, but the bloom is so much more than just pretty — it's often the product of lots of exhausting, thankless work.
I'm no gardener, but I do know this about flowers. It takes lots of direct sunlight, lots of energy, lots of nutrients for flowers to bloom — all for the odd person who walks by and stops to admire it and to inhale.
It has been 10 years since Sun became an MP. A long time for any career — except in politics, where terms pass in the blink of an eye.
I ask if she's ever considered stepping down. Focusing on her family. Taking a gentler path, an easier path, a path of less resistance.
"I'll make two points, they may not directly answer your question," she tells me.
"First and foremost, I know deep down in my heart that I've done absolutely the best I can during these years. And what has really moved me, during these few days, is the number of people who have come up to me, and told me, 'I know you did your best'.
So in that sense, whatever outcome, in some ways to me, it's actually not so important anymore. But that my conscience is clear."
Top image from Mothership
