PM’s moving target

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

His father stepped down as PM at 67. Goh Chok Tong gave up the hot seat at 63.

So Hsien Loong will most certainly become Singapore’s oldest PM. And from the look of things, soldiering on past 70 is now every bit the possibility that he himself warned against.


He did not say exactly why it was unwise for the PM to continue past the age of 70. Presumably, it is not that the PM becomes too old and frail to do the job. The more likely reason is that it does not bode well for the country, to have to rely on one man at the helm for too long.

Is PM Lee grappling with the dilemma that no one has emerged as a clear successor? For certain, his current Cabinet is not exactly bursting with intellectual foresight and prowess. It pales in comparison to previous Cabinets of his father’s and Goh Chok Tong’s reign.

Last year, when asked what he wanted in the next PM, Hsieng Loong said ideally another Lee Kuan Yew. Is he still looking in vain and hoping against hope?

Hsien Loong was DPM for 14 years before he took the top job. Of the current DPMs, Teo Chee Hean is only two years younger, so he is ruled out. Tharman Shanmugaratnam has ruled himself out, and in any case, we are told by the PAP that Singapore is not ready for a non-Chinese PM.

Time is running out, if a DPM is to be blooded in to be the future PM. It has to happen sooner rather than later, most definitely immediately after the next GE.

It is possible that PM Lee is simply hanging on to the job because http://theindependent.sg/pms-moving-target/


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