"Looking back and looking ahead: Dr Kenneth Paul Tan on PAP’s governing principles, PM Lawrence Wong, and the next general election"

On May 15, 2024, at the Istana, Singapore’s fourth prime minister Lawrence Wong took his oath of office and was officially sworn in, taking over from prime minister Lee Hsien Loong. This political transition is significant for a host of different reasons, and so, across two episodes, we take a deeper dive with Dr. Kenneth Paul Tan of Hong Kong Baptist University. We look back, and we look ahead. We look back, across Singapore’s first three prime ministers or three generations of leadership. We then look ahead to three potential electoral scenarios for Mr. Wong and his ruling People’s Action Party or PAP.

In the first episode, we ask Dr. Tan: Across Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Chok Tong, and Lee Hsien Loong, how has the ruling PAP consistently approached Singapore’s governance since we became a self-governing state? We then explore those three electoral scenarios for Mr. Wong, in terms of the PAP doing better than they did in GE2020, the party doing about the same, or if they come close to losing or even loses its parliamentary supermajority. LISTEN TO THE EPISODE.

In the second episode, we focus on the next general election. Fundamentally, we ask Dr. Tan, is it the PAP’s election to lose, or the opposition parties’ election to win? LISTEN TO THE EPISODE.

We previously hosted Dr. Tan on this podcast in 2020, in an episode focused primarily on our collective, growing reliance on migrant labour in neo-authoritarian Singapore.