From Wednesday 15 May Wong will be the new Premier and will take the place of the last leader of the Lee dynasty. Will he be able to navigate the turbulent waters of international competition to maintain Singapore’s role as the traditional bridge between the West and East Asia?
Thirty-one, thirteen and nineteen. These are the years spent in power by his predecessors. However, it is difficult to imagine now whether Lawrence Wog will be able to last so long as Prime Minister of Singapore. The city-state is preparing for its fourth transfer of power since 1965, the year of independence from Malaysia.
On Wednesday 15 May, Wong will take over from Lee Hsien Loong, who has been in office since 2004. And he does so at a particularly delicate moment for Singapore, which is increasingly caught up in the global and regional competition between the United States and China. Wong had long been announced as Lee’s successor, the last heir to the dynasty of the father of the country Lee Kuan Yew, but the timing was rushed.
Initially, the changing of the guard was supposed to take place in the autumn. But on April 15th the announcement came that the replacement would instead take place only thirty days later. The swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for eight in the evening at the presidential palace. After Goh Chok Tong, Wong will thus become the second prime minister not to be part of the Lee family.
Wong, who turns 53 next year, comes from humble beginnings and did not attend elite schools. His father was born in China but moved to Singapore and his mother was a teacher. His political rise was rapid. He was Lee’s principal private secretary from 2005 to 2008, entered politics in 2011 and has held various ministerial positions since then. Notably, he led the ministries of Education and National Development before becoming Finance Minister in 2021.
Having successfully led Singapore’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic in his role as co-chair of the Government’s task force on the matter, Wong was chosen by his Cabinet colleagues in early 2022 as the next generation leader. Shortly thereafter, Lee appointed him deputy prime minister. The various portfolios Wong has held have allowed him to gain broad political experience.
However, his time as deputy prime minister was short, so much so that in the coming years his team is expected to include many of the leaders of his generation, the third by the standards of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP). continuously since 1965.
Wong will face several problems. Since April 2022, when he is effectively tipped as Lee’s future successor, the rifts in Singapore society have widened with rising costs of living and greater inequality.
Resentment among foreign workers, a large part of the city’s workforce, has grown. This is leading Singaporeans to have fewer children or leave the city-state, while the perception of the country as a stable financial center is being undermined by increasing corruption and “dirty” money laundering. All while the PAP faces pressure to move from illiberal leadership to a more inclusive government.
Wong has always been rather shy, but to make himself known to the public he posted a video on TikTok in which he played “Love Story”, a song by Taylor Swift, on the guitar. Not a random choice, given that the American singer was in Singapore for several dates of her tour, which in South-East Asia stopped only in the city-state, relaunching tourism and angering neighboring countries that aspired to host them too Swift.
But another cumbersome shadow over Wong’s mandate is undoubtedly the rivalry between the United States and China, which is increasingly having repercussions on the security of the region. Just think of the tensions between Beijing and the Philippines in the South China Sea. Singapore appears one of the most worried countries, also because its historic neutral posture is being put to the test.
In an interview with the Economist in early May, Wong declared that he is neither pro-China nor pro-America, but “pro-Singapore”. According to Wong, the global order is changing and the transition will be difficult because, although America’s unipolar moment is over, it remains a preeminent power in a world that will have more than one great power.
“China certainly sees the United States as trying to contain, encircle and suppress it, trying to deny China’s rightful place in the world,” he said. “They feel that there is this containment to bring China to its knees; there is this feeling, and for every action, there will be an opposite reaction,” he added.
Singapore implemented sanctions against Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, but Wong suggests that in a hypothetical confrontation with China it might behave differently. “Taiwan is fundamentally very different from Ukraine, even though there has been an attempt to draw parallels between the two. Ukraine is a sovereign country and the Russian invasion was a grave violation of the UN Charter and a violation of sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
But Singapore’s concern is also and above all economic-financial. Wong has repeatedly said that while the military is very careful about collateral damage, retaliation and escalation in conventional warfare, it is less simple to assess the consequences of using economic and financial tools for geopolitical purposes. Navigating the turbulent waters of international competition to maintain its role as a traditional bridge between the West and East Asia will be anything but simple.
