Lawrence Wong endorsed as leader of PAP's 4G team, paving way for him to be Singapore's next PM

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

SINGAPORE - Finance Minister Lawrence Wong has been selected to be the leader of the PAP's fourth-generation (4G) team, paving the way for him to be Singapore's next prime minister.

Cabinet ministers affirmed their choice of Minister Lawrence Wong, 49, as the leader of the 4G team on Thursday (April 14), Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a statement.

This decision was endorsed by all Government MPs in a party caucus, it added.

The dominant political question among the few observers of singapore politis has been answered. The PAP's electoral dominance( last election haul of 10 opposition mps was considered a record victory) and to hide their internal dirty laundry and disputes tend to make observing Singapore a politics in frustration with designs being given without much knowledge of the drama behind that.

The one exception to that has been the question of Prime Ministerial succession, Lee Hsien Loong son of legendary prime minister Lee Kuan Yew seems to have broken the streak of dynastical politics, with the only other politically active members of his family having fallen out and joined the oppostion. 2 previous designated successors have fallen flat, with Foregin Minister George Yeo(a colorful foregin minister who's retirement has been interesting) loosing hs seat in a surprising oppostion victory motivated by anti-immigration sentiment in 2011.

THe next chosen successor Heng Swee Keat, had a poor performance in the 2021 election where he was moved the marginal East Coast constituency to help shore up that seat* but had a disastorus campaign launch* and generally disappointing performance over the course of the election seemed to have moved him out of contention for the leadership.

Lawerence Wong is one of the most well known minister in singapore as he was in charge of our covid-19 response which was generally considered quite good, with the country having a high vaccination rate and generally being opend for international travel(I personaly disagree due to the inhuman conditions we put our migrant workers in but that is a rare opinion that isn't shared much here), avoiding the extremes of Chinas zero-covid and the more lax western approach. Otherwise he remains a pretty standard PAP minister with nothing realy notable about their portoflio or historical policies.


*singapore election are run on the basis of multi-member district allocated via FTPTP, so the party that get's 51% of the vote in a district can be allocated all 6 mps for the multi-member GRC. This lead to strong or well known minister being spread around to marginal counstieuncies to help shore them up(which isn't saying much given that the PAP wins 60+% of the vote, with the oppostion being fairly fragmented with presicley one seat that could be considred safe oppostion

**video of the disastrous campaign launch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTrndDwYWqs


 https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/lawrence-wong-endorsed-as-leader-of-paps-4g-team

[CumbrianLefty]

Thank you for this very detailed account.

[Aurelius]

Singapore is a whole generation behind on wireless data transmission technology. Sad!

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Singapore is a whole generation behind on wireless data transmission technology. Sad!

Funnily enough I just signed up for a 5G plan yesterday, 4G here referrs to 4th generation of leadership

[Aurelius]

Singapore is a whole generation behind on wireless data transmission technology. Sad!

Funnily enough I just signed up for a 5G plan yesterday, 4G here referrs to 4th generation of leadership

I figured, 'twas a joke.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

On another note, Singapore's oppostion is mostly in disarray. The leading worker party which is a mostly unideological outfit who's try to postion them as a version of the PAP more in touch with young and working class voters had a lot of hype in 2021, with them managing to win yet another ward bringing in a record number of oppostion MP's back into Parliament(which given the goverment's choice to run the election in order to capitalize on a covid induced popularity boost and get rid of all oppostion MP's counted as a suprise victory). This has quickly burned itself out, Jamus lim an economics proffesor who was one of their star canidates turned out to have mostly faded away from the public limelight, while Rasseah Khan has resigned after lying in parliment regarding her having personaly accompanied a sexual assault victim to a police station and turned on the party establishment accusing it's leader Preetam Singh of ordering her to cover it up.

The SDP remains as ideological and irrelevant as it's ever been, with it's leader having taken a step back to run a cafe and it being consigned to remain stuck as extraparlimentary oppostion. The PSP has quikly faded away with it's 2 haul of MP's having proven themselves as idiotic nobodies trying to poorly use anti-vaxx and anti-immigration sentiment in a way that's made themselves look fringe.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (LHL) has submitted his formal resignation effective may 15th and advised President Tharman Shanmugaratnam to appoint finance minister Lawrence Wong as his replacement. After more than 19 years in office, LHL has resigned a mostly successful prime ministership, though he lacked the same kind of international presence as his father he has kept the model stable, accepting necessary liberalisation and making appropriate u-turns when public sentiment bubbled up(like in 2011 against immigration), as well as allowing the existence of a formal parliamentary opposition(something his father has never accepted). His Singapore is clearly a freer place than that of his fathers, though he was also never afraid of suing a critic into bankruptcy using the country's strict libel laws. Singapore today is a richer, and most would agree better place to live than when he first took office though critics will point to a lack of focus on welfare and an increasing obsession with GDP metrics, along with a rising cost of living, as well as start of a possible housing crisis as week points.

Didn't see the first post in this thread at first, reminds me of the Singapore political compass you posted here maybe 3 years ago.

2015 Reddit comment on the impact of housing costs in Singapore

As many people have said: housing costs. However, I think this is really more important than a lot of people realize.

Just to preface this, I am a foreigner on an employment pass, so there is some obvious bias. Also, I'm going to oversimplify things a bit, because of course it's more complicated than I'm making it out to be--but I'm going to give the broad strokes.

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

Why is housing so expensive? At the core, it's land availability (but of course there are other factors at play). Singapore is a small country with almost no natural resources, so what space there is goes towards either business or residential purposes. No real farming/mining/plantations/etc to speak of. This leads to a very densely populated society that makes large dwellings prohibitively expensive.

Because housing, a basic need, is so expensive, a HUGE emphasis is placed on competition for high-paid jobs. This means that parents encourage their children to pursue one of 3 different career industries: finance, business, and science (especially in chemical technologies). The educational entry-points for these positions are very competitive and are largely based upon results from a variety of standardized tests. Because the educational system is so competitive, parents tend to have a very strict and narrow definition of what is acceptable behavior and leisure-time-pursuits for their children, which can, in time, lead to the children having a fairly myopic view of what is acceptable as well.

Because so much emphasis is placed on a few industries, the other local industries suffer. This means lower wages for lower-skilled workers who don't want to be there anyway. This is especially true of engineering and IT. As a result, companies will often choose to import foreign workers for the most "undesirable" jobs (read: manual labor) that many people are unwilling to do or unable to provide for their family at the offered wages while doing. These foreign workers are often from very poor neighboring countries and are sending money home while staying in dormitories (cutting costs quite a bit).

This leads a culture clash and a bit of resentment from the local population. These foreign workers aren't really integrated into society as they are kept (out of financial necessity) in cloisters of other foreign workers. For many Singaporeans, travel is not financially prudent, and when they do get the chance, they don't often choose locations that are impoverished. As a result, a bias against poor, foreign workers develops as they are seen as "unsafe" and "untrustworthy" (to be fair, however, this is a very common phenomenon that appears in most similar situations--so it is not specific to Singapore). I'll not get into this too much, as it is a very delicate issue, but we should look to the recent Little India incident as evidence of the volatility of this situation on both sides.

Because the big businesses that people aspire to be part of are often multinational corporations, these businesses often have practices and standards that they feel are incompatible with local customs. They will often look inward (towards their home country) for hires rather than outward (towards the Singaporeans). Again, this is very much an oversimplification, as there are a lot of factors that complicate this. However, because many of the highly-sought-after jobs are going to "foreign talent", this also breeds resentment from Singaporeans towards foreigners of the high-income bracket. This leaves locals in a bit of a tight spot because the jobs they don't want to do (and couldn't make a livable wage off of) are taken by foreigners and the jobs they DO want are also often taken by foreigners. To make matters worse, many of the high-paid "foreign talents" are often given very attractive "expat packages" that provides for housing in condominiums--further driving up the cost of housing as it is easier to price-gouge somebody who can put it down as business expenses.

Because competition for these jobs is so intense and is fought on an international level and not just among themselves, Singaporeans also find that the stress of the workplace does not lend itself very well towards more "romantic" lifestyles. Not only that, but Singaporeans tend to be quite pragmatic, and when people in their entry-level, very competitive, high-stress finance jobs living in a 2-bedroom flat look at the housing costs and the cost of extra tutoring for children (seen as a necessity for kids sometimes as young as 4 or 5 to keep their educational edge)--they often decide to have only one child (if any). This leads to an aging population.

Because there is an aging population, more resources need to be devoted towards keeping the elderly active and productive. Combined with the fact that the cultural norm of filial piety is highly-stressed, there is a large feeling of obligation to bring one's elderly parents into their household--further cramping the already small, expensive flats. Again, driving up the cost of larger dwellings as they are more sought-after. EDIT: To make matters worse (in the eyes of the populace), an aging population has a dramatically negative effect on the nation's economy as the local workforce shrinks and leads to less productivity and a reduced consumer-culture. In order to offset this, the government has proposed to increase immigration in order to grow the population. Given the already tense atmosphere surrounding the "foreigner" issue, this will likely exacerbate the "us versus them" mentality that many locals have adopted.

So, in the end, you have a population that is very stressed out, working jobs they don't really enjoy for salaries that don't cover the costs of maintaining the previous and next generations. Mixed in all of this, you have easy scapegoats of "foreign workers" and "foreign talent" because they are seen as an "other" and tend to keep to themselves in their foreigner bubbles. Most of these things can be directly or indirectly attributed to the cost of housing. It is not the only problem in Singapore, of course, and there are obviously plenty of exceptions to this explanation--however, it is probably the most visible and tangible problem that most people can easily feel the effects of.

Noah Smith also had some interesting insights on Singapore in his Nov 2023 podcast episode on "progressive dystopias". 

• Every residence (and/or the land these flats are built on) is on a 99 year lease from the government- not that different from the PRC's land use policy but in the context of city-state governance.
• Singapore's "solarpunk" landscaping is VERY resource intensive (e.g. extensive pesticide application in a tropical rainforest climate)