News is a week old but no one posted it. Thought it merited some discussion.
Rather fascinating Cabinet Shuffle that provides some insight into current Singaporean politics, caucus dynamics, the focus of the Prime Minister.
Posted by zanpancan
News is a week old but no one posted it. Thought it merited some discussion.
Rather fascinating Cabinet Shuffle that provides some insight into current Singaporean politics, caucus dynamics, the focus of the Prime Minister.
Posted by zanpancan
2 Comments
Submission Statement: An article on important developments and info that is a week old but wasn’t ddiscussed here regarding recent Singaporean politics and the priorities of Singapore’s Prime Minister.
So, this shuffle is interesting on quite a few levels.
1) It follows a whole series of micro-to-decent-size scandals involving various ministers and follows the resignation of Minister Koh Poh Koon and the Muslim Affairs Minister Faishal Ibrahim after he was found having an…*affair*.
2) It sees the promotion of a whole crop of younger ministers to new responsibilities while putting in place 5 women in Cabinet, which makes it the Cabinet with the highest number of women in Singaporean history.
3) It sees the elevation of long-time big shot K.Shanmugam to the level of Senior Minister signaling his place in the government. He’s also the first Senior Minister who also heads a Ministry. Wong has also brought back Ng Chee Meng, someone who was previously dropped and also stripped some responsibilities from Minister Tan See Leng (likely in response to some controversies regarding properties).
4) Some promotions are eyebrow-raising such as that of David Neo who was quite an odd Ministerial choice in the first place yet seems to be moving up despite a meh record. Same with the aforementioned Ng Chee Meng who is pretty unpopular generally. Just *odd* choices.
5) Lots of GE2025 folk getting promoted quite rapidly with the aforementioned Neo, alongside Jeffrey Siow, Jasmine Lau, Foo Cexiang, and Shawn Loh as examples.
6) A lot of Senior Ministers of State (not full Ministers) from previous electoral crops were seemingly bypassed as Wong tries to make his mark on the Parliamentary Caucus and Cabinet post GE2025 and in taking the reigns from the party of Lee Hsien Loong. And in doing so, he may have pissed them off including some key figures like Desmond Tan or Sun Xueling.
7) Lawrence Wong has ***still*** not relinquished his Finance Minister title while being PM. I would’ve speculated that he would’ve given it away by now yet he seems truly invested in keeping it with him. If it’s because he wants that level of control, hasn’t found someone who he thinks is component enough for the role, or just loves the job, no one knows, yet that portfolio is an incredibly key reward for potential allies that he is just sitting on. To be fair, Lee Hsien Loong had them both for a while too.
Interesting times all around. Hope this post and ping is appropriate and substantive enough.
!ping SEA