“I have been hunting far and wide for strong candidates to join my team and I’m so glad Christina brought you to my attention,” Elvis continued. “You will be the ace in my royal flush.”

As transparent as Elvis’ attempt to stroke her ego was, it worked. Sharon took it as a compliment that Elvis would place her on the same level as Dr Gimme Lao. In her mind, she locked on to the star candidate as the benchmark to beat.

When the election campaign began in 2011, Elvis and Christina Overee went to great lengths to coach her. They did not doubt her capabilities but they knew her appeal to the electorate needed work.

“Always smile. Show your teeth, or you will come across either condescending or insincere.”

“You will be walking the ground and talking to the average Singaporean. Mirror their language. If they don’t speak good English, forget about your perfect grammar and elite school vocabulary. Speak Singlish, and dialects, where possible. Go down to their level.”

Sharon was grateful for the coaching. She came from an affluent background and studied in elite schools. She did not have many friends who lived in public housing. At work, she had to impress her superiors but never had to be circumspect around her subordinates. Left on her own, she would not know how to connect with the blue-collar working population.

Sharon memorised catchphrases that were well-used among the masses and peppered her speeches with them. She taunted her political opponent and claimed that the crafty man employed “pattern more than badminton”. She cringed inwardly when she spouted the asinine phrase but the crowd loved it and cheered. She would have loved to coin the term Machiavellian, but the word would be lost on her audience. The Overees were right. It was a different ballgame soliciting votes from people who formed the bulge in the bell curve of intelligence quotient. To showcase her brilliance would only alienate them.

So Sharon continued to speak the language of the masses. She claimed that she would run the estate maintenance of her constituency efficiently such that “swee swee bo zhao zui”, which in Hokkien meant that it was “so nice that there is no leakage of water”. By voting her in, they would guarantee themselves a reliable representative who was “woon woon jiak bee hoon”, or “steady like eating vermicelli”. Although she secretly found many of these rhyming phrases moronic, the audience lapped them up. So Sharon continued to show her teeth when she smiled and spoke the language of the populace and for that, the electorate of her constituency voted her into parliament.

As far as Sharon was concerned, the real bonus was her engineered transfer from the Economic Development Board to Temasak Holdings prior to the election; she could not have contested as a civil servant. It was a dream come true working for one of the biggest sovereign funds in the world. She had to believe that the Overees were her lucky stars!