Favourite books, leadership style and managing dissent: Highlights from Lawrence Wong’s interview before becoming PM

Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong at a press conference at the Istana on May 13, 2024. SINGAPORE: Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong recently gave a wide-ranging interview to the Singapore media - days before he takes over as Singapore’s fourth Prime Minister on Wednesday .

Already there are moves being done in this regard, he said, citing examples like youth panels and the Singapore Government Partnerships Office. In such instances, the government would play the role of “a facilitator, a listener, an honest broker” to help different groups engage each other and find compromise.

He said that in the next general election due by November 2025, if “the contest is fiercer and we were to lose just a few percentage points, it is not unimaginable for two or maybe three opposition parties to come together, form a coalition and run the government”. “I do not have a must-read list; I read widely. I think many ministers do; it is not just me. I read mostly non-fiction these days," said Mr Wong, in response to a question on whether he has a list of must-read books for different groups of people given that he is known to love reading.

“He distilled leadership into two things. One, knowing what to do and two, getting people to do what is the right thing. It sounds very simple, but actually, there is a lot of wisdom in that,” said Mr Wong. Mr Wong said that this process has already begun, citing the Forward Singapore exercise which he launched two years ago, recent policy moves in public housing and improvements to the SkillsFuture scheme, as well as the upcoming unemployment benefit scheme “which in the past had said this was not something we would do”.

“In the past we could come up with a broad statement like Swiss standard of living. It is very hard to identify one single benchmark today. So in this new phase, we are in uncharted territory. We have to find our way forward,” he added.

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