At a press conference at the Istana on Saturday (Apr 16), Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that the timeline of succession for the country’s leadership has yet to be determined.
The press conference was held two days after PM Lee announced that Finance Minister Lawrence Wong had been chosen as the leader of the ruling People’s Action Party 4G or fourth-generation leadership team, making him the PM-in-waiting.
The decision as to when the leadership will be handed over will be based partly on what will help the PAP win in the next election.
“Whether it is for me to hand over to him first, he consolidates, he leads into the next election as leader of the 4G team and will be in charge after the next election.
Or I go into the next election leading the PAP, fight the next election, … and if we win, after that Lawrence takes over.
And then the 4G team moves forward. It will depend on how things evolve. But either way, our plan is for Lawrence to be the next PM.”
“We will do this carefully and deliberately. I am already 70, and I am looking forward to handing over to Lawrence once he is ready,” the Prime Minister added, saying that he will discuss with Mr Wong the best strategy for the party to take in tackling the next GE, which they will decide on “later”.
The next election is required to be held on or before November 2025, but may well be called earlier than that. In the most recent election, held in July 2020, a few months after the pandemic began, the PAP experienced its worst defeat, even though it won 89 per cent of the seats in Parliament.
“We do not assume that the PAP will win the next general election. Every GE from now on will be about which party will form the Government – not just how many seats the opposition wins, or what percentage of the votes the ruling party gets,” Mr Wong said at the press conference.
PM Lee said in the past that he intended to step down at the age of 70, but this changed due to the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, when he announced that he would stay at the country’s helm as he wanted to hand the country over to its next leaders “intact” and in “good working order.”
PM Lee turned 70 in February of this year.
Previous to the pandemic, it had been widely expected that he would have been succeeded by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, who had been elected as the First Assistant Secretary-General of the PAP in November 2018.
However, in April of last year, Mr Heng bowed out as a contender to be Prime Minister, citing his age and health.
The video of the full press conference can be watched below:
/TISG
https://theindependent.sg/lawrence-wong-may-be-declared-the-chosen-one-but-some-netizens-still-want-sm-tharman-to-be-the-next-pm/