SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lawrence Wong will be leading the People’s Action Party in the upcoming General Election due by November 2025, as the party’s new secretary-general after Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong indicated that he will be stepping aside and endorsing PM Wong as the party’s new chief.
SM Lee announced the party’s significant milestone during the PAP Convention on Sunday at the Singapore Expo. During the biennial conference, the party’s cadres elected the PAP’s 38th Central Executive Committee (CEC).
“The process started some time ago. In 2022, the 4G ministers overwhelmingly endorsed comrade Lawrence Wong as their choice to lead them. Shortly after that, I appointed him as the Deputy Prime Minister.
Following the last conference, comrade Lawrence became the deputy secretary-general and also started chairing the party’s exco.
Since then he has assumed more responsibility in running the party and preparing for the next General Election. This year, in May, he took over from me as Prime Minister,” said SM Lee in his final speech as the PAP’s chief.
SM Lee, who has held the party’s secretary-general post since 2004, will continue to serve in the PAP’s CEC in a supporting and advisory role.
“In the CEC, as in the Cabinet, I will neither be the first responder, neither will I be the final decider,” added SM Lee.
“Instead, I will do my best to support the new secretary-general. To offer him the benefit of my experience, to help him to strengthen the party and mobilise the support from Singaporeans, to collectively tackle our problems and the challenges ahead of us,” he added.
The former Prime Minister also emphasised that while the leadership transition has been smooth over the past two years, Singaporeans should not take such seamless transitions for granted.
SM Lee also shared that several foreign leaders he met expressed astonishment at how seamless and uneventful Singapore’s leadership transitions have been.
“Singapore has carried out orderly transition for top political leaders three times in a row now. But we cannot take such orderly transitions for granted.
It is amazing to them because in other countries, all sorts of things can happen and do happen. Often, when a party does badly in a general election and loses its mandate to govern, its leader is forced to resign to take responsibility,” said SM Lee.
People’s Action Party’s newly elected cec
12 members were elected from a secret ballot out of 19 nominees for the PAP’s CEC. The newly elected PAP’s CEC will serve a two-year term from 2024 to 2026.
In no particular order of votes, the newly elected PAP’s CEC members are Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, K. Shanmugam (Minister for Home Affairs and Law), Desmond Lee (Minister for National Development), Edwin Tong (Minister for Culture, Community and Youth), Chan Chun Sing (Minister for Education), Masagos Zulkifli (Minister for Social and Family Development), Grace Fu (Minister for Sustainability and the Environment), Ong Ye Kung (Minister for Health), Vivian Balakrishnan (Foreign Affairs Minister), and Indranee Rajah (Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office).
Transport Minister Chee Hong Tat and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng co-opted into the CEC as they garnered the 13th and 14th highest votes from the PAP’s cadres.
ChannelNewsAsia reported that the other five nominees on the ballot for the CEC election are Josephine Teo (Minister for Digital Development and Information), Sim Ann (Senior Minister of State for National Development), Janil Puthucheary (Senior Minister of State for Digital Development and Information), Desmond Tan (Senior Minister of State in the PMO), and Alex Yam (Marsiling – Yew Tee GRC member of parliament).
The newly elected PAP CEC will convene in a few weeks to elect key office holders, including the party’s chairman, secretary-general, treasurer and organising secretaries, who will steer the party’s direction and prepare for the next General Election due by November 2025.
In the previous election in 2020, the Workers’ Party made significant gains, retaining Hougang SMC and Aljunied GRC, and additionally winning Sengkang GRC, which the PAP previously held.
The Progress Singapore Party, founded by former PAP MP Dr Tan Cheng Bock, were awarded two Non-Constituency Member of Parliament seats as they were the “best-performing loser” in West Coast GRC.
