Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong attended an hour-long ministerial forum with students from the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) on Wednesday evening, Sept. 4

Extensive Q&A session

PM Lee kept his opening remarks brief and limited it to only 10 minutes, after which, he invited students to ask him questions.

In total, he answered more than 20 questions from the audience.

Do connections help?

One of the questions asked was the role connections played in helping one get ahead in Singapore.

This was one of the questions PM Lee spent one of the the most time answering.

His response lasted 3 minutes and 13 seconds.

You can watch PM Lee's response here:

In essence, PM Lee said connections help open doors, but it is superficial as substance is more important.

Here is a transcript of PM Lee's reply in full:

I think if you join the government it doesn't matter whom you are connected to you.

You're going to be evaluated on your merits.

I think in many Singaporean companies that is also the case.

If you think you got connections and you want to use "guan xi" to get places, it may open you the first door to, but in Singapore it is a small place, people will straightaway know, behind the "guan xi" there is any substance or not.

I think what we want to make in Singapore is a society where your ability and your contributions count much more than your connections.

Connections do matter. If you grow up in Singapore, you have friends, you serve NS together with your buddies, you come to university, you have your university cohorts.

These are your networks growing up with you and entering the workforce and then rising into society with you, that's important.

You know them, they know you. You get the measure of them. They also have a sense what you can contribute.

Each other's strengths and weaknesses.

In Singapore, it's a very small place, you cannot bluff one.

In another country, you come from faraway, wow, people think this is a famous man, he has a few billion dollars, at least he says he has a few billion dollars, maybe he is very good.

But in Singapore, you cannot run away, somebody will know you.

And you will know him, and therefore, it is possible for us I think to be more objective and we will build our system, and we have built our system to our maximum extent possible, to be fair and to assess the person on what he can do.

But I would say it is also a matter of the way the society and we ourselves interact with one another and react to one another.

I mean, a person who goes to a posh school overseas, for example, some Singpaoreans do.

They may come back with a posh accent or speak quite "atas".

A few people do. I mean, it happens.

If you didn't, your parents speak dialect at home, or nowadays don't speak dialect, but they speak English to you -- not quite the standard Mediacorp accent.

And you, therefore, don't quite speak standard Mediacorp English, people may say what's wrong with you and maybe the accent tells you something.

And I think that we should resist that, that (pause)... I wouldn't say instinct, that temptation to look at somebody and say, "He looks not quite right, therefore, I mark him down."

You must go beyond the looks, and the voice, and the polish.

Does he have the substance or not?

Is he an unpolished diamond, or is he a very beautifully polished piece of shining glass?

There is a difference and we have to know that.

You can read a summary of what PM Lee said here.

You can watch PM Lee's 10-minute opening address here:

A total of 22 videos have been uploaded onto YouTube and made into a SUSS Ministerial Forum 2019 playlist by the Prime Minister's Office.

You can watch them sequentially by playing this video (each video ranges from 42 seconds to 3 minutes 49 seconds):