Singapore has announced that Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong will take over as the country\u2019s next leader on May 15. Wong, 51, will succeed Lee Hsien Loong who has held the top job for 20 years. Lee will \u201crelinquish his office on 15 May 2024\u201d, the Prime Minister\u2019s Office said in a statement on Monday evening. \u201cHe will formally advise the President to appoint Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Mr Lawrence Wong to succeed him.\u201d In a video message released shortly afterwards, Wong said he accepted the position with \u201chumility and a deep sense of duty\u201d, according to the state-owned Straits Times. \u201cI pledge to give my all in this undertaking,\u201d he said. Wong, who gained plaudits for his handling of the island\u2019s pandemic response, has been seen as Lee\u2019s successor since April 2022, when the ruling party chose him as head of the \u201c4G\u201d or fourth generation of leaders in Singapore\u2019s political jargon \u2013 politicians the party would like to take control of the government in the coming years. Their previous choice, Heng Swee Keat, a former central bank chief and education minister, stepped aside suddenly in 2021 throwing the party\u2019s succession plans into disarray. The tiny island, sandwiched between Malaysia and Indonesia, plays an outsized role in international affairs as a key ally both to the United States and China. But it is also facing more domestic challenges, particularly over the rising cost of living and immigration, while the ruling People\u2019s Action Party has also been rocked by a rare corruption scandal. Singapore\u2019s government leaders are the world\u2019s highest-paid with the prime minister taking home 2.2 million Singapore dollars ($1.6m) a year including bonuses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Singapore has announced that Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong will take over as the country\u2019s next leader on May 15. Wong, 51, will succeed Lee…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16219,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}