Chen Show-Mao, after years of advising on deals like Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. (601288)’s $22.1 billion initial share sale, has a new type of offering in the works: His opposition-party candidacy to join Singapore’s parliament.

“We want to help you to ask the serious questions that will make our democratic system of government work better,” the head of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP’s Beijing office told more than 20,000 people in a suburban Singapore sports stadium last week in his first campaign speech before the May 7 elections.

A victory by Chen and his Workers’ Party team, which is contesting in a district that elects five representatives, would alone more than double the number of opposition seats in parliament. A Chen team win would also oust Singapore’s Foreign Minister George Yeo, who is leading the People’s Action Party candidates in that constituency.

PAP co-founder Lee Kuan Yew has dubbed the 50-year-old lawyer a “celebrity” who hasn't lived in the country for decades and said voters will “repent” if they don’t elect the ruling party. The PAP’s 52-year stretch in government has made the country Asia’s richest per capita.

Opposition parties, which previously haven’t run enough candidates to prevent the PAP from returning to power on nomination day, are challenging 82 of 87 seats this year.

While analysts including Lim Jit Soon, Nomura Securities’ Singapore research head, said they expect another clear victory for the PAP, they said a lower share of the public's vote could see some policy changes. The PAP won 67 percent of the vote and all but 2 of the seats in parliament in the 2006 poll.

Reviewed Policies

“If the PAP achieves a significantly reduced popular vote it may look to review some of its policies like immigration,” Lim said in a strategy note titled ‘Times they are a-changin.’

Foreigners make up 36 percent of Singapore’s 5.1 million population, up from 14 percent in 1990, boosting the economy and creating jobs for Singaporeans, the government says.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said last month that investments such as a new $3 billion memory chip plant built by Intel Corp. and Micron Technology Inc. wouldn’t have been possible without foreign workers. Opposition parties have questioned if growth is being pursued at too high a cost by letting too many foreigners in.

“How many hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to bring in every year is enough?” Chen asked in his April 28 rally speech to roars of approval. He declined to be interviewed for this story.

‘Success Story’

Chen himself is a “success story” of Singapore’s immigration policy, Law Minister K. Shanmugam said April 29. Chen came to Singapore from Taiwan with his parents and younger sister when he was 11 in 1972. He has spent the last 30 years overseas.

He graduated with an economics degree from Harvard, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford and got his law doctorate from Stanford University before joining Davis Polk in New York in 1992.

PAP leaders such as organizing secretary Ng Eng Hen have asked if Chen can identify with the aspirations of Singaporeans after spending most of his life overseas.

“I’ve spent all this time abroad, but that doesn’t mean I stop being Singaporean,” he said when announcing his candidacy last week.

Chen, who took Singapore nationality in 1986 after serving in the country’s army, said living elsewhere “enhanced rather than diluted” his sense of being Singaporean.

Dealmaker

Chen’s work at Davis Polk included advising Cnooc Ltd. (883) on its $18.5 billion bid for Unocal Corp. and the global IPOs of companies including Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (601398) Ltd., Air China Ltd. (601111), China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (600028) and China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd. (762)

The American Lawyer magazine, a trade publication, named him one of its dealmakers of 2010 for managing the Agricultural Bank IPO, which was underwritten by investment banks that included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Morgan Stanley. (MS)

“In the second half of my life, I would like to give something back to my country,” Chen said at his nomination announcement, adding that he planned to relocate his wife and three children to Singapore from Beijing regardless of whether he gets elected.

Chen will be retiring from Davis Polk, Hong Kong-based partner William Barron said. “We appreciate all of his efforts at the firm and wish him all the best of luck.”

Public Service Culture

Davis Polk is a firm where public service has been part of the culture, said Anthony Root, who first met Chen when they opened the firm’s Hong Kong office in 1993.

“It’s a good thing for Singapore to have someone with his international experience, integrity and quiet wisdom offering to serve,” said Root, who now heads Asia for Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP.

Chen is putting a lot on the line, said Wilson Ang, a Singapore-based corporate lawyer who got to know him when both worked for different international firms in Hong Kong. “Politics is a rough and tumble game.”

Two lawyers with Singapore law firms who previously ran as Workers’ Party candidates have been sued for defamation by PAP leaders. A third was fined for tax evasion after the election.

Tang Liang Hong, who contested the 1997 elections, was ordered to pay a record S$8 million ($6.5 million) for defaming 11 PAP members including then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and Lee Kuan Yew, the father of the current premier who led the PAP to eight election victories before stepping down in 1990. The amount was later reduced to S$3.6 million.

Transparent Laws

Tang’s wife, who was named as a defendant in the lawsuits, was bankrupted and is still paying the debt, Tang said from Melbourne, where he now lives.

The PAP says Singapore’s rules and laws are transparent and rejects suggestions that it uses defamation suits to dissuade political opposition.

“It is a pattern because there is a pattern amongst the opposition leaders to accuse us of wrongdoing,” Goh said in a September 2003 interview with the BBC. “It’s a pattern for us to restore the harm that they have done to our reputation.”

At his nomination announcement, Chen said he was aware of the need to be as careful as possible in formulating his public comments.

Lee Kuan Yew, the oldest member of Singapore’s cabinet at 87, has said the ruling party would accept the loss of the Aljunied district Chen is contesting. At the same time, he added that its voters have to accept the consequences of choosing a team including a “celebrity who has been away 30 years.”

‘Live and Repent’

“If Aljunied decides to go that way, well Aljunied has five years to live and repent,” he said, adding that property values in the area may fall with the PAP government prioritizing districts it wins for improvements.

Singapore is tolerant and open enough for a voice like Chen’s, said Eduardo Ramos-Gomez, managing partner of Duane Morris LLP’s Asian offices.

“He’s committed to the cause and believes that he can present a different dialogue and view to Singapore,” said Ramos-Gomez, who has served with Chen on the advisory board of the Singapore Management University School of Law since 2007 and was Mexico’s ambassador to the city state.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Tan in Singapore at atan17@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Douglas Wong at dwong19@bloomberg.net