An Open Letter to the PAP: Your silence on Alvin Yeo's overcharging is deafening

On 1st October 2014, Alvin Yeo Khirn Hai, the PAP MP for Choa Chu Kang GRC was found guilty of overcharging Dr Susan Lim by the High Court. While acting for the Singapore Medical Council, he had overcharged by over a million dollars. 

Overcharging is a serious offence and a lawyer, Mr Andre Arul was fined $50,000 in 2010. Had MP Alvin Yeo been fined, he would have lost his MP seat automatically. 

The Law Society turned a blind eye to MP Alvin Yeo, quickly saying that he had not been directly involved in the billing. 

This argument is bullshit because of these reasons:

1. How can Alvin Yeo not be involved in the preparation of the accounts/costs when he himself was involved in the actual day to day provision of legal services/research/representation for the Singapore Medical Council?

2. The lawyer usually works closely with his secretary to finalize the time spent and the amount to be billed. Anyone who engages lawyers knows this. It is common sense. How else would the clerk know how many hours, what rates for each and what are the items to bill? The clerk cannot decide on the fees himself without consulting the lawyer. If Alvin Yeo is allowed to cheat, next time any lawyer who overcharges can also just blame his clerk. 

3. It implies that Alvin Yeo is free to pocket any amount so long as it is on his invoice. $10 million? $1 billion? As a Senior Counsel and the Senior Managing Partner of the law firm, he should be completely aware of how much he is supposed to be paid. There shouldn’t be sudden obscene increases in his paycheck.

It follows that MP Alvin Yeo knowingly overcharged his client. 

For over a week, MP Alvin Yeo has been widely criticized by netizens. Till now, he has not come out to address the serious allegations about his integrity. This proves that he is guilty and has little integrity worth defending. 

I urge Alvin Yeo to be a man and own up for his dishonest conduct. He should not cling to the MP seat that he does not deserve. Furthermore, he is a Christian and should have known what the Bible says about the dangers of wealth. He should repent.

Alvin Yeo seems to have been a worthless MP anyway. Unlike other PAP MPs whose facebook pages have updates on constituency events and their house visits, Alvin Yeo’s facebook page has not been updated since GE2011. There are two videos of Alvin Yeo speaking robotically and nothing else. (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alvin-Yeo-Khirn-Hai/230526380314028)

Some of his residents have made requests for help on his facebook page and received no response. One resident even expressed her frustration that MP Alvin Yeo had only visited ‘selected’ houses and that she had waited 4 hours for nothing. In Parliament, MP Alvin Yeo has spoken up less than 30 times since GE2011. 

This is in contrast to the WP MPs who have made speeches and asked hundreds of questions in parliament. Perhaps it is too much to expect MP Alvin Yeo to use his “$100,000 per hour” mouth to speak up for Singaporeans. 

The PAP leadership and PAP online activists have remained unusually silent on all threads about MP Alvin Yeo’s dishonesty. Hence, these are not fabrications about MP Alvin Yeo’s integrity; these are facts. He is indeed a man of no integrity, a man of poor upbringing. This is the message silence sends to his family members, friends, colleagues and all Singaporeans. 

“If any of my PAP colleagues is accused of lying, I will investigate and get to the bottom of the matter. If he has lied, there is only one option – he has to go. If he is innocent, I will insist that he clear his name publicly. The matter has to be resolved one way or other. It cannot be left as an “I say, you say” matter of opinion, which leaves a permanent question mark hanging over his reputation, and the reputation of my government.”