SINGAPORE: A Singaporean has compared Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, suggesting that the island’s premier is an ideal peacetime leader compared to Zelensky, who is fighting off the Russian invasion of his country.
The fan’s comment was published underneath a post by Facebook page ‘Singapore Matters’. Covering the achievements Mr Lee had made in mathematics before he joined politics, the pro-ruling party page’s post came after Mr Lee said in an interview last week that he does not regret choosing politics over math.
Mr Lee was a promising young mathematician who was offered two scholarships to study at the University of Cambridge. While he was an undergraduate in 1973, Mr Lee was awarded the prestigious Senior Wrangler position. Awarded to the top mathematics undergraduate at Cambridge, this position has been described as “the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain.”
Mr Lee graduated with a first-class honours degree in mathematics and computer science with distinction. According to college tutor Denis Marrian, Mr Lee was “the brightest mathematician he had admitted to the college”.
British mathematician Béla Bollobás added that Mr Lee “would have been a world-class research mathematician” had his father – Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew – not persuaded Mr Lee to leave the field and pursue politics. He said in 2007:
“Loong was not only hardworking, conscientious and professional, but he was also very inventive. All the signs indicated that he would have been a world-class research mathematician. I’m sure his father never realized how exceptional Loong was. He thought Loong was very good. No, Loong was much better than that.
“When I tried to tell Lee Kuan Yew, ‘Look, your son is phenomenally good: you should encourage him to do mathematics,’ then he implied that that was impossible, since as a top-flight professional mathematician Loong would leave Singapore for Princeton, Harvard or Cambridge, and that would send the wrong signal to the people in Singapore.”
Sharing this quote by Prof Bollobás, the ‘Singapore Matters’ page said: “He was a brilliant Mathematics student. He did his Math Tripos in Cambridge in 2 years instead of 3. He was not only the Senior Wrangler (top of the class), he won it by a street, scoring 31 alphas, 12 more alphas than the runner up.”
The post was liked by over 800 Facebook users, including the PM’s wife, Ho Ching and ex-Singapore diplomat Bilahari Kausikan.
The most-liked comment on Mr Bilahari’s post was from a netizen who compared PM Lee to Ukraine’s Zelensky. Facebook user Lynette Choy said:
“Some people think that the ideal leader is a Zelensky, a wartime hero. I think that our PM is the model for a peacetime leader. Anticipating and planning for decades ahead, not only for situational challenges but also for the leadership after him. It is a thoughtfully curated leadership that is unbiased and good for SG.”
PM Lee has occupied his role as head of government for close to two decades. The 71-year-old had earlier expressed a desire to retire as PM before the age of 70, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said that he would stay on at his post until the health crisis came under control.
Singapore has since exited the acute phase of the pandemic and transitioned to living with endemic COVID while adjusting its Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (DORSCON) level back to Green last month.
Despite this, there has been no word as to when the PM plans to hand over the reins of the Government to PM-designate Lawrence Wong – even as political pundits predict that the next election may occur as soon as next June.
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