"Towards a Fourth Generation Leadership in Singapore" by Terence Lee

Terence Lee looks into the post-Lee Hsien Loong leadership plan that the ruling party has in place, in this essay from forthcoming book "Voting in a Time of Change: SG's 2020 General Election".

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Publisher’s note: This is the last of four essays released from the upcoming publication, Voting in a Time of Change: Singapore’s 2020 General Election, a collection of essays edited by Kevin YL Tan and Terence Lee that draws on the 2020 General Election to make insightful analyses about political developments in Singapore.

Chan Chun Sing, a potential contender? (Photo credit: Lim Weixiang, Zeitgeist Photos)

In “Towards a Fourth Generation Leadership in Singapore”, Terence Lee identifies key moments in the lead-up to the 2020 General Election, as well as during the General Election itself, from which observers can infer the likely outcome of the ongoing leadership transition in the People’s Action Party. Terence is Associate Professor in Communication at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. He is the author of Global Internet Governance: Influences from Malaysia and Singapore (with Susan Leong, Palgrave, 2021) and The Media, Cultural Control and Government in Singapore (Routledge, 2010). He has also co-edited, with Kevin YL Tan, Voting in Change: Politics of Singapore’s 2011 General Election and Change in Voting: Singapore’s 2015 General Election (both with Ethos Books). The following is an extract from his essay; the full version with footnotes is accessible via a hyperlink at the end of this newsletter.
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INTRODUCTION

The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) expected the Covid-19 general election of 2020 to be a transitional election in which Singaporeans would cast their votes in support of its fourth generation (4G) leadership succession plan. If this had gone according to plan, there would have been something of an ironclad certainty as to who Singapore’s next prime minister would be soon after GE2020. What happened instead was akin to a Shakespearean tragicomedy where the electoral performance of Deputy PM Heng Swee Keat, heir presumptive to PM Lee Hsien Loong, cast further doubts on what has been referred to as the nation’s ‘4G leadership plan’.

Heng Swee Keat’s apparent ‘epic fail’ at GE2020 started on Nomination Day when he was unexpectedly pulled out of his seat in Tampines Group Representation Constituency (GRC), where he has served as a Member of Parliament (MP) since 2011, and fielded in neighbouring East Coast GRC as its lead candidate. It appeared that PAP strategists–of whom Heng was likely a part, being in charge of the Party’s national election campaign–determined that someone of his stature was needed to shore up the team at East Coast. Instead, Heng’s presence exposed the vulnerability of the PAP’s vaunted 4G leaders’ allure as it won East Coast GRC by the closest margin among all seats contested at GE2020.

East Coast GRC was first formed as a six-member GRC in 1997 via a boundary redistribution of three pre-existing GRCs (Bedok, Eunos and Marine Parade). Remaining largely unchanged in 2001, it was then reduced to a five-member GRC in 2006 and 2011. In 2015, it was further reduced to a four-member GRC. East Coast GRC expanded once again into a five-member GRC when it absorbed the neighbouring Fengshan Single Member Constituency (SMC) at GE2020.

While the official reason given for all electoral boundary shifts is to account for demographic changes around the country, the vicinity of the East Coast region in Singapore is widely perceived as the stomping ground of the Workers’ Party (WP). In Fengshan SMC in GE2015, the WP’s Dennis Tan polled a respectable 42.5% against the PAP’s Cheryl Chan, the eventual victor. The PAP’s strategic decision to strengthen the East Coast GRC team was proven sound when it was revealed that the WP did in fact put forward a formidable team there, led by one of its newest and most popular members, Nicole Seah. Many Singaporeans would remember Nicole Seah, who was barely in her 20s, causing a sensation when she emerged onto Singapore’s political scene as the National Solidarity Party’s (NSP) star candidate in GE2011.

The PAP’s tragicomedy started as soon as Heng was nominated for East Coast GRC. There were murmurs on the ground that Heng’s move to helm East Coast GRC was a signal of his weakness and lack of electoral appeal. Social media users even asked if he was deemed expendable and thus assigned to lead a ‘suicide squad’ (a veiled reference to PAP candidates standing against the WP in Aljunied GRC) against an affable WP team fronted by Seah. Perhaps the most comical and most memorable aspect of Nomination Day in 2020 was Heng’s inarticulate post-nomination speech that was broadcast on national television, when he fumbled:

For our East Coast residents, the - we also have a plan for the East Coast. We have a East Coast- Singapore- we have a together, an East Coast plan. We care, at East Coast.

Notwithstanding the many memes and comic references poking fun at Heng’s incoherence and gaffe, the most unsettling and sobering outcome was that the PAP won East Coast GRC with an unconvincing 53.41% of the votes. This was a mere three percentage points away from defeat. If GE2020 was to have been a referendum for the Government’s 4G leadership plan, Heng’s slender margin of victory should give pause for a major rethink.

Click here for the full version with footnotes of “Towards a Fourth Generation Leadership in Singapore” by Terence Lee. Subscribe to SG Broadsheet to access the previous essays from Voting in a Time of Change: Singapore’s 2020 General Election, as well as to receive an invite to the book launch on 28th March 2021.