Image: Isaiah Chua / RICE File Photo
When I saw Jurong East-Bukit Batok GRC MP David Hoe’s post on Instagram about replying to his constituents’ emails at 3 AM, I scoffed.
“Even at 3 AM, I still keep going — because your concerns matter,” read the caption.
After all, it’s nearly 1 AM as I type this article up. I could take a screenshot right now—timestamp glowing in the corner of my screen—and post it online.
I could caption it “even at 1 AM, I still keep going — because deadlines matter.”
I’d look ridiculous. Worse, I’d look like I was trying to score praise for simply doing my job.
That’s the thing about most jobs, at least in the Singaporean workplace. You’re expected to be diligent, but discreet. You can stay up into the wee hours chipping away at work, but you’re not supposed to broadcast it. Effort is meant to be quiet. Competence is assumed, not advertised.
The moment you post about how hard you’re working, your post gets branded as wayang—performative, showy, try-hard—and becomes the target of ire among colleagues.
Politics, however, operates on a different logic. Visibility is everything. If politicians toil behind the scenes without broadcasting their presence, people simply assume they’re skiving. And so they post.
It’s not just Hoe either. In the last few weeks since the 15th Parliament was sworn in, I’ve seen grainy photos of MPs in meetings, TikTok slideshows of MPs walking around their estate, proof of house visits from both sides of the political spectrum, and so many selfies.
Naturally, these pictures sometimes invite snide remarks. On Hoe’s fairly innocuous post, the comments were brutal.
“[You] want an award?” one person asked.
“Making your rounds and helping your residents is truly your responsibility. But no need to show you are working through the hours to show your commitment,” another said.
But there’s a strange contradiction here. The work our MPs do is real. Yet it feels inauthentic when they post about it.
On the flip side, if they don’t post about it, they’re also doing themselves a disservice. Work done visibly gets dismissed as fake; work done invisibly is assumed to be absent. Are you really walking the ground if no one is around to document it?
In fairness, some posts do lean hard into the theatrical: consider MP Lee Hong Chuang’s ‘sleeping’ selfie during the pandemic. Or People’s Power Party leader Goh Meng Seng uploading unsolicited feet pics to prove that his party was braving the rain for their final GE2025 rally.
In those cases, the wayang posts hurt more than they help. I, for one, can’t help thinking of the Bae Caught Me Slippin meme whenever Mr Lee pops up on my feed. Seeing Mr Goh’s mud-crusted foot also did not help my impression of him.
More often than not, though, visibility becomes a metric for care, engagement, and effectiveness. Even though we know, rationally, that it’s a terrible proxy.
At the end of the day, politicians wayang (cleverly or cringingly) because they know enough voters care about visibility.
It’s a contradiction we all participate in. On the one hand, we say we want substance, not performativeness. On the other hand, come election season, how many voters really know what their MP has done in Parliament? How many can name a policy their GRC representative championed, or a bill they’ve debated, or a social issue they’ve pursued with dogged determination?
Instead, we hear common refrains: Have I seen my MP around? Have they walked the ground enough? Why do they appear once every five years?
This is why selfies abound. We get endless photos of MPs along HDB corridors, in planes, and captions reminding us of their packed schedules and late nights. It’s the political equivalent of LinkedIn hustle posts.
Are some of these posts eye-roll-inducing? Absolutely. But they’re also a response to people who demand not just competence, but presence and transparency. And really, with the salaries our officeholders are being paid, it’s not too much to ask.
Perhaps the problem isn’t that our current and aspiring MPs are posting too much—it’s when the content they’re posting lacks depth or additional context.
Tell us what that late-night correspondence was about. Explain what you’re walking the ground to observe. Toss in your honest opinions on current controversies that impact our daily lives once in a while. Let your online displays be backed by real substance and standpoints.
So yes, maybe it’s a little cringeworthy to post about answering emails in the wee hours. But at least David Hoe was answering emails. We can’t simultaneously demand effort and mock those who display it.
Instead of leaving hate comments, we could channel that frustration into holding our elected officials to a higher bar. Hidden beneath the snide remarks lies a valid sentiment: Why do politicians across the board feel the need to market themselves so much? Is it because citizens aren’t feeling the impact of their work in real, tangible ways?
When we reduce effort to optics, we risk rewarding performance over substance. So rather than shaming someone for trying, perhaps the better instinct is to ask: Who’s quietly doing the work that actually improves Singaporean lives—and who’s just putting on a show?
