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Singapore Succession
Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew marked his sixty-fifth
birthday in
October 1988 and celebrated thirty years as prime minister
in May
1989, and the question of political succession received
increasing
attention. The prime minister and his long-time associates
devoted
a good deal of their attention to the issue during the
mid- and
late 1980s. They continued their efforts to identify
promising
younger leaders and bring them into the cabinet. The
process of
selection was an elaborate one, which began by identifying
welleducated administrators from the public service or private
sector.
Those people selected would be promoted to managerial
positions,
often when in their thirties; those who succeeded would be
considered for appointment to a government position, often
by being
designated a parliamentary candidate. In addition to
identifying
good administrators, the older leaders tried to select
persons of
integrity and good character who were able to work as
members of a
team. Second-generation leaders were then tested by being
given
ministerial portfolios and encouraged to go out and meet
the common
people. The selection favored technocrats and
administrators and
rewarded those able to defer to senior leaders and get
along
smoothly with their peers. The senior leaders were aware
that the
process did not test the ability of the second-generation
leaders
to cope with a severe political crisis, but apparently
could find
no way to select for that skill.
The first-generation leaders were confident of their
own
rectitude and ability to use their very extensive powers
for the
common good, but they were not confident that their
successors
would be so self-restrained. Throughout the 1980s, they
considered
various limits on executive power that would minimize the
possibility of arbitrary and corrupt rule. These included
constitutional changes such as a popularly elected
president with
significant powers. The leaders claimed, perhaps with
hindsight,
that their refusal to build up the PAP as a central
political
institution and their efforts to bring a wide range of
low-level
community leaders into the system of government advisory
bodies
reflected a deliberate effort to disperse power and, in
this sense,
to "depoliticize" the society. The effort to encourage the
circulation of elites between the government and the
private
sectors and between the military and the civilian
structures served
the same end. In so centralized a system, much depended on
the
decisions of the prime minister and undisputed leader, who
was
reluctant to appoint a designated heir or to approve any
measure
that would diminish his authority. The expectation clearly
was that
a much more collective leadership would replace the old
guard.
The next generation of leaders, called the "new guard,"
was led
by Lee Kuan Yew's son, Lee Hsien Loong. A brigadier
general in the
army, he first attained prominence in mid-1984 when he was
cited as
a possible candidate for the December 1988 general
election. His
prominence soared when, as minister of trade and industry
and
second ministor of defence (services), he was appointed
head in
1986 of the critical Economic Committee assigned to
redraft
Singapore's economic strategy.
Lee Hsien Loong's ascendancy and his consolidation of
administrative and political power assisted the political
fortunes
of bureaucrats who formerly had served in the Ministry of
Defence
(known as the "Min-def mafia") and ex-army officers who
had served
with Lee when he was a brigadier general. The ascendancy
of the socalled "Min-def/ex-army officer group" under Lee initially
was
suggested by some observers when the Singapore Armed
Forces (SAF)
appeared to assume new importance in government policy
decisions.
In March 1989, when the government announced a substantial
pay
raise for the civil service, the military received an even
larger
raise with guarantees that future raises would be
consistently
higher than those allotted for the civil service. The
government
also announced that the policy of assigning SAF officers
to twoyear rotations in civil service positions would continue.
The
policy ensured that the SAF would be represented in all
branches of
the government and that the distinction between the
civilian and
military bureaucracies would be less clear.
The younger Lee's ascendancy to positions of greater
power both
in the PAP and the cabinet demonstrated his increased
political
stature. He was elected second assistant secretary general
of the
party in 1989, a post that had been vacant since 1984.
This
position placed him second in line in the party hierarchy
behind
his father and Goh Chok Tong, who was first assistant
secretary
general of the party and deputy prime minister and
minister for
defence in the cabinet. Lee enhanced his position in the
cabinet
when, as minister for trade and industry, he was named
chairman of
a special economic policy review committee. In this
capacity, he
gained the power to review the policies of all the
ministries for
their economic impact on Singapore. Previously such
reviews were
conducted only by the Ministry of Finance. Some Singapore
observers
speculated in 1989 that Lee would one day be appointed
minister for
finance and add control of Singapore's purse to his
influence over
the armed forces.
Generational ties supplemented the institutional links.
Lee
Hsien Loong and his associates were in their mid- to late
thirties
in 1989. Lee's nearest rival for power was Goh, who was
forty-seven
years old. Goh and his few allies in the cabinet, who were
in their
mid- to late forties, appeared to be increasingly losing
ground to
the younger group, however. For those with a military
background,
the military connection remained important even though
they had
resigned from the military before undertaking their
civilian posts.
The obligation of all males to periodically undergo
reservist
training assured that the military connection was not
severed. If
the army became a source of future cabinet ministers, some
political observers expected that ethnic Malays and
Indians would
find it even more difficult to gain access to senior
government
positions. Ironically, the army in pre-independent
Singapore was
predominantly Malay and Indian. After independence,
however, the
government changed this bias by increasing Chinese
representation
through universal conscription.
Data as of December 1989
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