SINGAPORE - Mr Seah Kian Peng, 61, will be nominated as the next Speaker of Parliament come August.
He will take on the role left vacant by his former Marine Parade GRC colleague Tan Chuan-Jin.
Former Speaker Tan and former Tampines GRC MP Cheng Li Hui resigned on Monday from the People’s Action Party (PAP) and Parliament over their affair.
Mr Seah, who will be elected as the new Speaker at the Aug 2 Parliament sitting – assuming no other nominations – is not unfamiliar with the duties of the role.
He was Deputy Speaker from 2011 to 2016.
Here are five things to know about Mr Seah:
1. He entered politics in 2006
Mr Seah entered politics under the People’s Action Party in 2006, in the general election held in May that year.
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He is currently serving his fourth term as an MP in Marine Parade GRC.
Within Parliament, apart from having been Deputy Speaker, Mr Seah also chaired the Estimates Committee from 2011 to 2015. The committee is tasked with examining government spending.
Mr Seah and his fellow People’s Action Party candidates for Marine Parade GRC in the 2011 election, Mr Gr="#CC0000">oh Chok Tong and Ms Tin Pei Ling. PHOTO: BERITA HARIAN FILE
He was also previously a member of the Committee of Privileges and the Standing Orders Committee.
Mr Seah is currently chairman of the PAP’s Government Parliamentary Committee (GPC) for Social and Family Development.
He also chaired the GPC for Community, Youth and Sports previously.
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2. Advocate for changes to the Maintenance of Parents Act
One of Mr Seah’s most well-known contributions to Parliament may be his work on the Maintenance of Parents Act.
The Act, passed in 1995, allows seniors who are unable to provide for themselves to claim maintenance from their children who are capable of supporting them but are not doing so.
In 2022, a workgroup comprising nine MPs was set up to review the Act. Mr Seah was chairman of the workgroup, which conducted consultations with the public before tabling a Private Member’s Bill to amend the Act.
The Bill was introduced in May 2023, and passed after a three-hour debate in Parliament earlier in July.
A Private Member’s Bill allows any MP to initiate legislation, unlike most government Bills, which are introduced by ministers.
According to the latest amendments to the Act, elderly parents who are seeking monetary support from their children will have to declare if they have had any record of abusing, abandoning or neglecting their children in the past.
If there is such a record, the Tribunal for the Maintenance of Parents may not allow them to apply for maintenance from their children.
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Mr Seah said earlier in July that the amendments seek to strike the right balance, by strengthening provisions for parents while introducing measures to prevent misuse of the law.
He had also spearheaded efforts to amend the Act in 2010.
3. Former ‘Mr FairPrice’
Mr Seah was previously the group chief executive of FairPrice, which has a workforce of about 13,000 employees and group annual turnover of $4 billion.
He started as chief operating officer at FairPrice Group in 2001, and became FairPrice CEO in 2016.
He stepped down as chief in April 2022, and then took on the roles of deputy chairman of FairPrice Group and chairman of FairPrice Foundation.
Mr Seah Kian Peng started as chief operating officer at FairPrice Group in 2001 and stepped down as FairPrice CEO in April 2022. PHOTO: ST FILE
He is still the group chief executive of NTUC Enterprise – a holding group of all National Trades Union Congress social enterprises.
Mr Seah has spent a large part of his career with the NTUC group, helming different portfolios within the group.
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the then FairPrice chief urged Singaporeans to buy only what they need, without hoarding, as there was enough stock in the inventory.
“If you want to buy a little bit more, go ahead, but there’s no need to create a stockpile at home because if everyone is trying to do it on the same day and at the same time, it adds strain to the system,” said Mr Seah.
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4. Other involvements
Apart from his more well-known role at NTUC, Mr Seah is also the founding chairman of the Harvard Business School Club of Singapore. He stepped down in 2018.
He is also chairman of the Marine Parade Leadership Foundation, and sits on the board of the Singapore Olympic Foundation.
He announced on LinkedIn in July that he had joined the board of Trust Bank Singapore, the first digital bank here.
He previously also served on the board of the Centre for Fathering for 14 years.
He had also been a board member of Singtel, the Health Promotion Board and National Parks Board, as well as the Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise and Singapore National Cooperative Federation.
In September 2005, Mr Seah was elected as a member of the International Cooperative Alliance’s board of directors, making him the first Singaporean to be on this global board in the 112-year history of the alliance.
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5. Personal life
Mr Seah is married with two children.
He is the third of four children in his family, who lived in a three-room flat in Mattar Road, in MacPherson. His father was a line worker in a printing firm, while his mother was a housewife who took on sewing gigs to supplement the family income.
In a 2014 interview with The Straits Times, Mr Seah recalled his childhood – sleeping on thin mattresses on the living room floor, borrowing money from relatives when “sums didn’t add up”, and not wasting even a single grain of rice during mealtimes.
Mr Seah Kian Peng having dinner with his family. PHOTO: SEAH KIAN PENG
He told ST then that after all these years, he continues to keep a record of every cent he spends and cannot stand wasted food.
Mr Seah and his siblings were top students at the now-defunct Mattar East Primary.
They all made it to Raffles Institution (RI) or Raffles Girls’ School, but his two older sisters gave up their university education to provide for their younger siblings, a sacrifice he said in a 2013 interview that he remained grateful for.
At RI, Mr Seah made it to the squash team. He longed for higher-performance shoes and racquets that were beyond his means, even though he worked as a painter, kitchen helper and stocktaker during school holidays, reported ST in 2013.
Mr Seah later studied at the University of New South Wales.In a Facebook post on July 8, Mr Seah said that every year, his cr="#CC0000">ohort of RI schoolmates from 1974 to 1979 would gather to catch up. At this year’s meeting, he caught up with one schoolmate he had played squash with.
Mr Seah said in his post that he has had two major sports injuries in his life – one sustained while playing football during national service when he tore his anterior cruciate ligament, and the other in secondary school when he dislocated his elbow in a squash game as he tried to retrieve a drop shot but slipped and banged into the wall.
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Each year our cr="#CC0000">ohort of school mates (1974-79) will gather to catch up with each other. Glad I was able to make it last...
Posted by Seah Kian Peng on Friday, July 7, 2023
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Former ‘Mr FairPrice’ who spearheaded legislation: 5 things about Speaker nominee Seah Kian Peng
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