COMMENT | Fifteen years ago, the DAP came up with an experiment to change the face of the party. They recruited a 34-year-old Oxford graduate named Tony Pua. His story was compelling.

Pua grew up on the outskirts of Batu Pahat, Johor where his father was a small-scale poultry farmer to support a family of six.

A believer in hard work and excellence, he secured a string of scholarships to Singapore and the United Kingdom, where he completed the Oxford PPE programme (philosophy, politics, economics) that counts prime ministers and presidents among its alumni.

Two years after graduation, he took a risk to start an e-business consulting firm that made him “the youngest person to have listed a company in Singapore” at 29.

At his inaugural press conference in DAP, Pua announced that he was appointed the economic adviser to the then secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng, besides the executive editor of the party bulletin, The Rocket...