Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will step down next month and his deputy Lawrence Wong will take over, the second non-Lee family member to lead the wealthy nation.
“I will resign as prime minister on May 15, 2024, and Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong will be sworn in as the next prime minister on the same day,” Lee said on social media on Monday.
“I ask all Singaporeans to give Lawrence and his team their full support and work with them to create a brighter future for Singapore.” Joshua Wong, who is also Finance Minister, was elected in 2022 from the People’s Action Party (PAP)’s new generation of MPs. The legal heir to Lee Hsien Loong, the party has been in power uninterrupted since independence in 1965.
“I accept this responsibility with humility and a strong sense of responsibility. I promise to go all out in this undertaking.” Huang said on social media. The 51-year-old US-educated economist is widely regarded as a social media-savvy stalwart who has effectively handled the Covid-19 crisis while overseeing the government’s pandemic task force.
The city-state was one of the first in Asia to quickly bounce back as the pandemic eased in 2022 and business and tourism numbers rebounded.
Mustafa Izzuddin, a political analyst at consultancy Solaris Strategies in Singapore, said Huang is already well-known in Southeast Asia and to China and the United States, the two major powers most important to the city-state.
“I think he has brought a leadership style that is more suitable for different generations. I think Singapore’s core principles will continue to exist because it is a system that has been in operation for many years.”
“But I think his style may be slightly different because he comes from a different generation.” Outgoing Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s father, Lee Kuan Yew, was Singapore’s first prime minister when it became a sovereign nation after a brief but unsuccessful alliance with Malaysia.