Source: Petir magazine July/August 2009 Issue http://www.pap.org.sg/petir_articlepage.php?id=46&articleid=5329&cid=84
Dr Seet Ai Mee talks to Suresh Nair about being
one of the first female MPs, and her darkest political moment
Q: Your fishmonger incident of 1991 has been sometimes linked to your defeat in that election.
A: It wasn’t a fishmonger, it was pork sellers. I washed my hands after shaking hands with the pork sellers in the market, simply because I thought that if I shake the hand of another person later who may be Muslim, it would be a religious offence.
Did the press ask me why I washed my hands? No. Did the then Prime Minister (Goh Chok Tong) ask me? No.
Had both asked for an explanation, I would’ve told them. I didn’t know about the issue until PM spoke about it at the General Election rally.
Had it been clarified, we could’ve explained and defused the incident. The opposite happened instead and I became political fodder.
[...] office can withstand the scrutiny of the public eye and still come out tops. I remember a capable woman MP who stepped down from the public eye after an incident in which she was seen washing her hands following some [...]