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The man who would be king
Saturday, 28 March 2009, 10:35 pm | 1,398 views
A not uninteresting Cabinet reshuffle
There was little to fuss over Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s latest Cabinet reshuffle, which was announced on 26th March 2009 with minimal fanfare. That’s the norm in Singapore, where the ruling cabal prides itself on an orderly succession without the hoopla that usually accompanies similar transitions in other countries. Most of the changes have long been speculated on, but this masks what might be rather momentous implications for the political landscape.
Even so, for all its supposed banality there was still some surprise and not a little rancour over the “promotion” of Deputy Prime Minister S Jayakumar to the post of Senior Minister, a position that has traditionally carried little responsibility save that of a big-wig roaming ambassador. Some observers have panned the appointment as superfluous – in fact Mr Lee was breaking new ground by having two Senior Ministers, the other one being ex-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong – considering that the position is largely seen as a means of gracefully retiring elder ministers. The conspicuous exception of course is Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who held the position from 1990 to 2004 and continues to exert a visibly heavy influence on policy.
Mr Jayakumar was long thought to be due to retire, but since the last election in 2006 he appears to have made himself too indispensable to be eased out of the Cabinet just yet. He is also thought to have earned some credit for Singapore’s win in the Pedra Branca dispute with Malaysia at the International Court of Justice, which was also a reminder of the need for his legal expertise in complex international issues such as climate change.
What his appointment also points to is the outsized centralisation of policy-making prerogative in the Prime Minister’s Office, a trend underscored by the appointment of yet another minister there, in the form of Mrs Lim Hwee Hua as Singapore’s first female minister. This partly reflects the government’s oft-stated mantra of the need for better coordination amongst disparate agencies, but it does raise questions about whether the office can be streamlined and the portfolios of its various inhabitants better defined. Already, the wage bill for the politicians in the Prime Minister’s Office is just slightly less than that of all the other ministries put together.
Mrs Lim’s appointment as full minister, while long expected, came with the twist that she is still not helming any ministry of her own. One reason is that there is simply no ministry up for grabs. But it is also possible that Mrs Lim’s promotion is meant to beef up the Aljunied constituency, which was the weakest ward for the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) in the last election. This is particularly since the party’s helmsman in Aljunied, Foreign Minister George Yeo, has floated the possibility of retiring from politics. Furthermore, Mrs Lim would be a convenient foil for Ms Sylvia Lim of the Worker’s Party, who is the opposition’s only female heavyweight of note and had led her party’s team in Aljunied in 2006.
Heir today, gone tomorrow
But the real story of the reshuffle is essentially the tale of two admirals: one who would be Deputy Prime Minister, and another who, for all intents and purposes, would be heir-apparent to the Prime Minister.
The ascension of Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean (a former navy admiral) to the position vacated by Mr Jayakumar has been hypothesised since his entry into politics in 1992. He was immediately inducted into the Cabinet, where he has since turned in steady and competent performances, the most prominent of which was the military’s much-lauded mobilisation to aid Indonesia in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. Mr Teo is also thought to be a better grassroots man than the other obvious candidate for the deputy premiership, Mr George Yeo, who had some difficulty defending his ward the last time round in 2006.
The Prime Minister seems to recognise Mr Teo’s utility in this aspect. Asked about his new responsibilities, Mr Teo told reporters that one of his tasks was to ensure that the government remained connected to the ground. Surprisingly, he also said that he was to help strengthen Singapore’s ties with other countries. It’s hard to see how he would play a bigger role in this regard when Singapore already has two Senior Ministers, one Minister Mentor and another deputy premier and not to mention a foreign minister; in any case, Mr Teo already does a lot of travelling in his capacity as Defence Minister.
Yet Mr Teo’s appointment is still rather bold in a way: his real contribution might be to provide a slightly contrarian tack to a ruling cabal whose members seem overly like-minded at times. Mr Teo is known to be independent-minded with the gumption to back it up; moreover, unlike younger ministers like Vivian Balakrishnan or Raymond Lim, as deputy premier he will now have the heft to push his views.
Nevertheless there is little chance of Mr Teo becoming prime minister, short of something untoward happening to PM Lee. The two men are simply too close in age – given the ruling cabal’s proclivity for long-term planning, the ideal candidate is someone about a decade or so younger than PM Lee. And the only one in Cabinet who fits the bill is Rear Admiral (NS) Lui Tuck Yew, who was given the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts portfolio with the retirement of the incumbent.
In this regard PM Lee seems to have anointed an heir-apparent by promoting RAdm Lui to head his own ministry. Unlike other much talked-about candidates, such as Community Development, Youth and Sports Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, RAdm Lui has the right pedigree. He is the quintessential product of the establishment, having followed the same route of advancement through the military as PM Lee. He can therefore be counted on to protect the interests of the establishment – his Bill to regulate political films, for instance, is classic PAP doublespeak and tighter regulation in the guise of liberalisation. RAdm Lui’s new ministry is an important player in the government’s bid for control over burgeoning political discourse in cyberspace.
Dr Balakrishnan, on the other hand, was a private sector figure and an activist who was co-opted into the ranks. And unlike Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, RAdm Lui is of the right age and the right ethnic group – just a few months ago Mr Lee had said that Singapore was not ready to be led by someone from a minority group. The other advantage that RAdm Lui has is simply a dearth of competitors: unlike Mr Teo, who could count Mr Yeo as a peer, RAdm Lui doesn’t have any contemporaries who advanced as quickly as he has, with the other MPs from the batch of 2006 still lagging considerably.
But as the tragic tale ending in Kipling’s parable of the same title goes to show, nothing is set in stone, and Singapore’s political history is littered with promising figures who have fallen by the wayside. However, the ruling cabal seems to have taken a step closer to solve the vexing question of who should succeed PM Lee. If RAdm Lui turns in a decent performance, the odds are that he will be rotated quickly to head more heavyweight ministries, and there have been rumours that the trade and industry minister is also slated to retire. At this point, the prize seems very much his to lose.
