Mohamed Fairoz Bin Shariff is certainly a man of action — and perhaps a bit of risk-taker.
He sure doesn’t look like one, though — he was a librarian, for goodness sakes — and previously with the Singapore Discovery Centre.
Every day, he tells us, he eats the same thing for lunch — nasi padang with assam pedas and sambal goreng. He likes it spicy, but that’s about it; it’s the same.
(although he does remind us a little bit of Jaafar, heh… Okay, we’re kidding!)
The 36-year-old had only been with the National Library Board (NLB) for 10 months when he decided he would leave the public service to stand with the Workers’ Party’s (WP) slate of candidates for the 2015 General Election.
And we’ll tell you why he looks like he’s going all-in, too — he’s already got three young mouths to feed (aged seven, five and 10 months), and his mum also stays with him and his wife, a senior staff nurse.
Yet, he says, the decision to stand was a collective one made by him and his wife.
“We are aware that, you know, we might just lose the elections and I might just be out of job for some time, but it’s okay,” he told Mothership.sg over Saturday dinner at Bedok Corner food centre, near where he lives.
In fact, he adds, it’s not at the risk of not being able to provide for his children that he is doing this, but conversely for his kids that he is standing, and it was his wife who pushed him to do so.
“You can say she’s my pillar — she’s the one who holds me down and says, ‘look, you gotta do this’. She’s the one who always reminds me if I’m stressed to keep calm and move on. So yes, this is something that we have discussed for some time, and we are aware of the risks, but at the end of the day, the way we see it, we both know that what I am doing is for our kids.”
He said no to standing for election twice
He’s also got an interesting story to tell about how he was motivated to step up — he was first approached to stand in 2006, having been a party member since 2004, but turned the party down because he was about to get married. At the last election in 2011, he also said no because he didn’t feel ready.
“But what really made me feel that, ok you know what, I do need to step forward, was when in 2011 Pasir Ris-Punggol was contested by SDA and the Malay guy was my friend Shafni, whom my wife and I knew from NUS. We saw him, and I thought, ‘If Shafni is willing to step forward, why not, you know? Why not me?’ So that, in a sense, was when the process of discernment to stand really started.”
Fairoz knew his intention for standing could not come from this, though — that would be wrong and selfish — and so began a process of refining it that ended with his decision this year to say yes.
“My family, you can say, also played a role in my inclinations — my late grandmother has always been pro-opposition, I’m not sure why (laughs), and my whole family was brought up in this climate of ‘we need more opposition, we need more balance in our society’, so of course when I shared my intentions to stand with them, I had very strong support from my family… they’re very proud that I’m willing to step forward.”
He did face some friction from his in-laws, though, who reside in the west (“I think it’s an Easterner-Westerner thing!”) and who cautioned him against “getting involved”.
“They said if I was going to be a politician, join a party and stand for elections, I would risk losing my job and all that, and it took me awhile to convince them — but really it was my wife who helped to win them over. Now they’re very supportive and say they’re okay with it.”
He’s an only child with an “extended” family
Fairoz was about five years old when his birth parents divorced and his father left the family. His mother remarried, he gained two half-brothers, and then divorced and remarried again to his current stepfather, who lives with her and his family.
All that said, though, he says he dislikes the term “broken family” because he completely does not see his as one.
“Even though my mum and my two dads are divorced, all our families are on very good terms. My dad comes over during Hari Raya and my mum goes to visit his side too; there’s nothing wrong in our family, and I really wouldn’t call it broken — I’d instead use the term ‘extended’.”
As a matter of fact, he credits the support from his family as the source of his ability to succeed in school and to stay on the right track.
“I do get asked this question quite a bit — how I am so successful (academically and professionally) despite being from a broken family, and I say the key is family. The word is family. If we have strong support from our family, then there is nothing to stop that child of a whether it is a divorce family or single parent family to really excel. That is the base. That family support is the key to a child’s success.”
What’s his plan A and plan B?
With all this in mind, we asked him what his plan A is (if he is elected) and plan B would be (if he isn’t).
“Plan A — if I get elected, I will definitely be a full-time MP. Plan B… I haven’t really thought about it, but there are a few areas I’d be quite interested to pursue. I hope to go back to lecture at UniSIM, because I really love teaching, or even the NLB, if they’ll take me back, but alternatively, my wife and I might go into reviewing children’s books!”
And finally, we asked for his assessment of Singapore’s political opposition now. He thinks it comes in three steps:
1) Allowing everyone to vote — and this, he feels, has been attained, so he’s glad;
2) Build up a base of credible people — who aren’t just good enough to stand for election but who are also backed by solid volunteers. He feels this is in progress, but also assesses this is moving in the right direction.
The last? And this, he admits, is some years away, but it would be
3) To have an opposition party that is able to contest all the seats in parliament and form an alternative government.
“So it’s a very long process. I think our situation has come about because of the way our political environment has been, you know, for the past 50 years. But I’m glad I’m part of that process.
And I hope Singaporeans will continue to support us as we move in the right direction, because I feel that if for whatever reason Singapore doesn’t support us, we’ll just go back to square one and then… I do not know what kind of Singapore we are going to leave for our children.”
Source: http://mothership.sg
