SINGAPORE (May 14): Late on the night of May 8, Chloe Choo began looking at flight tickets. The 35-year-old distribution manager living in Singapore had not planned to return to Malaysia to vote. “I did not have much leave left. There was an emergency at home that required me to be home two weeks ago, which changed my plans to vote,” she tells The Edge Singapore.  

But as Choo’s social media feed flooded with stories of people overcoming the odds to make the journey home, she decided she just could not stay in Singapore. “What motivated me the most was Dr Mahathir [Mohamad]’s speech. He is a 92-year-old doing his best to convince people to do their part — to vote.” Choo ended up paying S$380 for a Jetstar flight — three times more than usual — to vote at Sunway Damansara on May 9.  

Her story is typical for many in Singapore who travelled to Malaysia this past week so that they could vote in what will now be recorded in the annals of history as a landmark election. Louis Kok, a 35-year-old bio-informatics researcher, had just started working here recently and was still on probation at his company when the election date was announced. “I requested leave from my boss and he approved it,” Kok says... (Click here to read the full story)