the challenges of the new government

A couple of years late due to the pandemic, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, 72, will be succeeded on May 15 by his designated successor, a trained economist. The new administration must find a solution to the problems that have characterized the city-state in recent years: housing shortages, an aging population and an insufficient health system.

Singapore () – On May 15, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, 72, will pass the baton to his designated successor, Lawrence Wong, 51, who will also head the Ministry of Finance. The decision had already been communicated some time ago but the implementation was postponed due to the conditions of the covid-19 pandemic.

There are several challenges that the new prime minister, an economist by training and former Minister of Education, will have to face, who was due to take office in 2022 after having been deputy prime minister and undersecretary of the PAP. They are problems that range from social mobility to environmental sustainability, through production needs to the adaptation of the health and welfare system for an increasingly elderly population, with special attention to areas with socioeconomic difficulties. And all this in an international context that requires determined and exemplary leadership from Singapore in the face of regional and global challenges in the delicate balance of alliances and interests in which the entire Southeast Asia is immersed, such as, for example, with the civil conflict in Myanmar.

It has been a long time since the party in power has found a solution to the problems that have characterized the last few years following the Covid-19 pandemic: aging of the population, ethnic and religious tensions, increasingly insufficient public welfare, shortage of living place. The social contrasts that affect the immigrant workforce (38% of the workforce, 1.5 million people), often discriminated against and poorly integrated, cannot continue to be postponed, as can the issue of availability and housing cost.

These problems are not new or unique in the Asian context, but they impact the image of administrative excellence and coherence of the leaders, who have always aimed at morality, listening to social forces and a legality that – with the aim of guarantee social peace – imposes severe controls and sanctions even for behavior tolerated elsewhere.

The health emergency of the pandemic put an end to twenty years of complicated government spread over four legislatures, and Lee (son of Lee Kuan Yew, who in turn led the country between 1959 and 1990, as head of the Executive and as general secretary of the Party Popular Action (PAP)) has played a decisive role. It is characterized by a calm and pragmatic style and has become the guarantor of well-being and ethnic-religious balance, as well as the international prestige of the city-state, relaunching its financial role, currently growing, also helped by the crisis of its rival Hong Kong.

It is a leadership that has shown few cracks and has had few opponents, which carried out public management based on the concept of “guided democracy” that the founders developed. It is an idea of ​​strongly centralized administration that aims at shared order and well-being even with repressive methods, liberal on the economic level but with a strong public contribution, considered functional not only for Singapore, but also as a reference for the entire Asian context. The majority supports and shares this government praxis, but at the same time it has not made it possible to resolve the series of issues that now remain in the hands of his successor, Lawrence Wong.