Exceptional leadership needed 
to keep S’pore system ticking: PM

SINGAPORE — Think the system to keep Singapore ticking can run on autopilot? Be very careful, for national leadership makes all the difference, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his May Day Rally speech yesterday.

“Some people say we don’t have to worry about national leadership anymore. We have advanced, we have arrived. We already have a good system, you just need to keep it running (on) autopilot.

“The civil servants know what to do, they’ll write the papers, they’ll draft speeches, they’ll draft the parliamentary question replies. Not so hard to be a minister (or even the) Prime Minister,” he said.

PM Lee urged caution among those who think Singapore no longer has to worry about building the best team and can try out a different one.

“By that logic, because Mercedes has an outstanding Formula 1 car, you don’t need Lewis Hamilton to win the F1 championship. The car will drive itself!” he said. “But national leadership makes all the difference.”

The task of getting good people to enter politics is difficult because there are few suitable people who are also difficult to persuade. “I am still trying hard, and I think I’ll get a few people to enter and join politics and stand … in the next General Election, but you can never have enough,” he said. “We can never have an A team for Singapore that is too strong.”

More than once, potential candidates have told PM Lee that while supportive of the Government, they did not think they could throw their hat into the arena and “take all the flak”.

But one reason for the strong reaction when founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew died was that people knew public housing, defence and other policies, as well as icons such as Changi Airport would not have been possible without the late statesman and his team, said the Prime Minister.

“I think it has caused many people to pause and ask ourselves: Are we sure we don’t need that kind of leadership anymore, that quality of leadership anymore?”

The late Mr Lee brought together exceptional individuals such as Goh Keng Swee, S Rajaratnam and Lim Kim San, and the job to build a strong leadership team remains, said the Prime Minister.

The newer office holders have mastered their portfolios and worked as a team, but “we all need successors”, he said.

PM Lee, 63, said he attended his second Asia-Africa Summit, held once every decade, in Jakarta recently, and should not be attending the next one 10 years from now. “But you must make sure whoever is the Prime Minister in 2025, when he goes, he will do us proud and advance our interests,” he said.