As Singapore’s PM Lee Hsien Loong turns 70, no clear successor is in sight

Lee signalled his intention to step down before he turned 70 but at the height of the pandemic pledged to stay on to steer the city state into calmer waters

With no ‘stand-out’ successor now, the danger is that the eventual leader ‘will not be seen as a clear choice in the first place’, says an ex-MP

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Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s prime minister, at a Bloomberg event in November 2021. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 2:00pm, 10 Feb 2022Updated: 11:39pm, 10 Feb 2022

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, in office now for 18 years, turned 70 on Thursday, an age that the city state’s political class has long viewed as a kind of self-imposed deadline the leader had given himself to hand over power.

Yet there is no clear successor in sight and observers are predicting that Lee may continue in his role until at least the middle of this decade.

For years, they frequently referenced an interview Lee gave a decade ago when he was asked whether he saw himself continuing as prime minister beyond the age of 70.

“I hope not,” Lee was quoted as saying by The Straits Times in September 2012. “Seventy is already a long time more. And Singapore needs a prime minister who is younger, who’s got that energy, and who is in tune with that very much younger and very much different generation.”

Lee, the eldest son of Singapore’s modern founder Lee Kuan Yew, is deeply popular within the ruling People’s Action Party’s (PAP) broad base of supporters.

But the seeming succession vacuum has still been unsettling for the public, given that past political transitions were long-telegraphed affairs.

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