SINGAPORE — After nearly 20 years heading Singapore’s Government, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will step down on May 15, 2024.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong speaking at the PAP Convention on Nov 5, 2023.At 72, Mr Lee is handing over the reins later than intended, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and after a hiccup in succession plans.
The transition comes 12 years after Mr Lee pronounced in 2012 that he did not want to be Prime Minister beyond the age of 70.As Singapore's third Prime Minister, Mr Lee led Singapore through several crises and critical changes from 2004 to 2024. As Prime Minister and the Finance Minister from 2001 to 2007, Mr Lee succeeded in making Singapore’s economy even more sophisticated than it was, and turning the city into a more global city, as a political scientist put it in 2014, 10 years into Mr Lee’s premiership.
Speaking about the next phase of Singapore’s development in that interview eight years ago, he said: “I think that for the next phase, the narrative cannot be a single word, nation-building. It has to be that we live in Singapore, we have a home, this is a place which is quite special.” Through it all, Mr Lee addressed the nation numerous times, communicating clearly the highly fluid situation and Covid-19 restrictions, rallying citizens in one of the most severe crises in modern times.
In an interview with the Singapore Mathematical Society in 1994, Professor Béla Bollobás who had taught Mr Lee at Cambridge, said: “He graduated at the top of his class, and he really won by a street. The one who came second has now become a world-class mathematician, but it was clear to everyone at the time who was the better one.”
“I decided that I had the responsibility to come back to Singapore, be part of Singapore, and do what I could to help the country to succeed. It is a small country, it was at that time a very new country — the first few years of independence, and every bit of every person who could make a difference should make a difference. I thought I would like to do that and do my best, and I think that is the right thing to do.
In 1984, Mr Lee left the Singapore Armed Forces to stand in his first general election, winning the Teck Ghee ward with 80.38 per cent of the votes. The wheels were put into motion in May 2004. A group of ministers met and unanimously nominated Mr Lee to be their next leader, while a caucus of PAP MPs on May 28 supported him as their leader to succeed Mr Goh, said a statement from the People’s Action Party . After these two meetings, the PAP central executive committee met and endorsed him as Prime Minister.
After entering politics, Mr Lee was the Member of Parliament for Teck Ghee, which later joined with other wards to become Ang Mo Kio GRC, from 1984 to 2024Mr Lee has fought and won four General Elections as Prime Minister, in May 2006 ; May 2011 ; September 2015 and July 2020 .At the 2003 National Day Rally, the last delivered by Mr Goh, the then-Prime Minister felt the need to reassure Singaporeans about his successor’s leadership style.
He had married in 1978 Dr Wong Ming Yang, who died in 1982 at age 31, leaving behind two young children, a daughter and a son. He later married Ho Ching in 1985, and they have two sons.
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