Lawrence Wong will officially take over from Lee Hsien Loong as prime minister on May 15, exactly a month from when it was announced on Apr. 15.
This will mark the end of Singapore's third prime ministerial transition, and what is almost ten years of unyielding speculation that ranged from when exactly PM Lee intended to step down (despite attempts to do so), to who would be taking over (twice).
Much of this has been borne out in what can only be described as somewhere between soothsaying and reading tea leaves, combined with an unhealthy amount of cherry picking.
If I had a dollar for every ironclad permutation of factors that would decide the next prime minister, I wouldn't be rich, but I could probably eat for a month.
Come what May
But so far the only true common factor between Singapore's prime ministerial transitions is that the announcement of the date took place the month before the actual transition.
Everything else is speculation.
In 1990, Goh Chok Tong took over from Lee Kuan Yew on Nov 28, with the date being confirmed in mid-September; and in 2004, PM Lee Hsien Loong, took over from Goh on Aug. 12, with the initial announcement coming in July.
There are certainly paired commonalities, such as both Wong and Goh were declared successors the year before they took up the reigns.
The senior Lee had confirmed that Goh would become prime minister in his New Year's Day speech, released on the last day of 1989.
Wong was announced almost exactly two years ago as the choice of the People's Action Party's Fourth Generation (4G) leaders to be PM Lee's successor.
In November 2023, during the PAP's party conference, PM Lee said that he expected Wong to be prime minister before the PAP's 70th anniversary in November 2024.
He also said that Wong would lead the PAP into the next general election due before November 2025, and that he would support him in whatever way he could.
No Astrology
A May transition is now the third time frame in which the prime ministerial handover will occur, with Goh being instrumental in deciding the precise dates of the previous two.
When Goh held a press conference to announce when he would take over the reins, he said he picked a Wednesday so that his new cabinet would be able to “put in some work that week”.
Clearly, he wanted to hit the ground running.
In a similar way, Goh determined the nature of how his successor would be introduced to the nation, although one might argue that PM Lee hardly needed a significant introduction.
The Aug. 12 date that Goh picked was politically significant.
It afforded Goh the opportunity to give a final “valedictory” National Day Message, but would give the incoming PM Lee the chance to open a "new chapter" for Singapore with a National Day Rally.
The mid-May date might give the opportunity to split the difference a bit, with no particular significance attributed to the date, but it will come just after the May Day rally.
If Wong gives the speech at the rally, as he did in 2023, it will give him a chance to set out his political store with his transition all but complete.
By now Wong is no stranger to setting out his own political agendas, having delivered three budget speeches.
The long goodbye
This will be the completion of PM Lee's final, and perhaps most important political project, the handover to a successor.
It is a project that has constantly bedevilled him, having had to delay his previous attempt to retire as prime minister.
He had previously said that he intended to hand over power before he turned 70 in 2022, but the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic convincing him to delay that plan.
Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat was initially slated to be that successor, rising to the role in 2018.
Heng subsequently announced in 2021 that he would step aside as the leader of the PAP’s 4G leadership, citing age and health reasons.
While Heng has recovered fully, and is in good health, he said that the demands of the "top job" on the person holding the role are "exceptional", perhaps alluding to the 2016 stroke that he had recovered from.
This further delayed the planned transition with the 4G leaders asking PM Lee to remain in the top job while a new leader was sought.
Wong, for his part, had been mentioned as a potential successor when Heng had first taken the role, but seemed an outsider at the time.
But the second time around, he had transformed into the front runner, in no small part due to his leadership role during the Covid-19 pandemic.
On Apr. 12 2022, Wong was announced as the leader of the PAP's 4G leadership team, and the de facto successor to PM Lee, with with 15 of the 19 cabinet ministers and former 4G ministers choosing him.
PM Lee said in November 2023 that he expected to complete the handover of leadership by the time of the PAP's 70th anniversary in November 2024, and that Wong would lead the party into the next General Election, with PM Lee vowing to support him in whatever way he could.
Today’s announcement confirms what has previously been said, setting in concrete the nature and scale of the political challenges put to the PAP and to Singapore itself, but also drawing a curtain on nearly two decades of leadership by Lee Hsien Loong.
New era
Wong's long term challenge is to shepherd Singapore into a new, more uncertain geopolitical era, with global tensions and technological revolution nipping at the heels of Singapore's nearly six decades of success.
His most recent Budget in 2024 has highlighted the need for Singaporeans to gain new skills, and underlined that the government is committed enough to it that they'll pay for it.
It also highlighted the need to provide support for Singaporeans, particularly those facing retrenchment.
He also spoke about Singapore facing an unstable and unpredictable world, and the importance of Singaporean unity in the face of such uncertainty.
But as he has said on numerous occasions, this is contingent on the results of a general election that is due by November 2025, the first led by a new PAP leader in almost two decades.
This will give him the opportunity to assert himself, and to attain his own political mandate, as well as to gauge the electoral health of Singapore's ruling party.
Wong is not exactly a newcomer to this; having entered politics in 2011, the next GE will be his fourth.
And while again many will try to discern patterns, and apply soothsayers to his decisions, it will be another opportunity to remember that Singapore is a relatively young nation, and that as of this moment there is no real precedent to what Wong is doing.
Ultimately he will have to take his own path.
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Top image via People's Action Party/Facebook