Singapore in 2016: Life after Lee Kuan Yew

Summary

For Singapore, 2015 was an extraordinary year. Proud of their country's numerous accomplishments, Singaporeans celebrated their fiftieth year of independence and participated in a year-long series of events and projects that were branded SG50. They mourned the death of their founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and wondered what the future would bring in his towering absence. Would there be an SG100 for Singapore and, if so, what would it be like? Also in 2015, the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) surprised many observers by winning 69.9 per cent of votes, and 83 out of 89 seats, in a general election in which all seats were, for the first time, contested. This suggested that opposition parties, which had been making strong inroads since the general election of 2006, were not after all going to have an easy time strengthening their presence in Singapore's government and politics. Liberal democratization was not going to be a straightforward linear process in Singapore.

In the afterglow of its convincing electoral victory, a more confident PAP government concentrated on consolidating its power and protecting Singapore's interests in a post–Lee Kuan Yew world. In his National Day message, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong focused on the theme of political, economic, and social stability in Singapore amidst an increasingly uncertain global and regional environment.

Leadership Succession and Renewal

In August 2016, midway through his National Day Rally speech, an annual address to the nation that can typically go on for more than three hours, PM Lee almost collapsed. Officially explained as a brief loss of consciousness caused by fatigue and dehydration, Lee's highly televised fainting spell was reported widely in both local and foreign news outlets. Earlier in May, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat had suffered a stroke due to an aneurysm during a cabinet meeting and was only discharged from hospital in late June. These two events, still broadly in the shadow of Lee Kuan Yew's passing, brought focus once again to the longstanding question of top leadership succession and renewal in Singapore.