With family at his core, WP new face Jasper Kuan says he is stepping up for the next generation

Underneath an unassuming and genial manner, Mr Jasper Kuan has a fire in his belly.

- Kok Yufeng

Sitting down with The Straits Times for an interview on April 22, days after he was unveiled as a new WP candidate for the 2025 General Election, the 46-year-old would often break into a hearty laugh and stop mid-conversation to wave to passing residents, to whom he is a familiar face.

But get him started on issues close to his heart — be it education, social security or public transport — and the former teacher turned payments expert speaks with focus and zeal.

“I think there are people who are better qualified than me. People who are more eloquent than me. People who are better at policy. But my value is that I understand the pain that regular folk are feeling,” he said at the void deck of a Housing Board block in Hougang, where he has lived for a decade and been a WP volunteer for close to five years.

Mr Kuan — who has two sons aged 11 and eight, and a five-year-old daughter — said family is at the centre of everything that he does, and has shaped his views of what Singapore can be.

The son of a cabby and a stay-at-home mother, Mr Kuan said: “We had enough. We were happy.”

Things took a turn when he was in his late teens after his late father developed kidney failure and needed dialysis thrice a week. His late mother had throat cancer, which she battled for 20 years.

“She’s a fighter. But every time she fought and won, her quality of life dropped. You could see it. Towards the last five years of her life, she was on a drip, and she couldn’t eat or talk,” Mr Kuan recounted.

He and his older sister were hit hard — financially and in spirit. But they pulled through with help from relatives, and it was this episode that made him feel strongly about the need for a stronger social safety net.