SINGAPORE: Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he was ready to step down in a couple of years time and his successor is likely already in the cabinet but a clear choice has yet to emerge
In an interview with CNBC released on Friday, Lee, 65, the son of Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew, said a new election could be called any time before 2021, when the current five-year parliamentary term ends.
“I am ready,” said Lee, when asked if he was prepared to step down in the next couple of years. But he said he needed to make sure there was a successor ready to take over, adding: “there are people in the wings. The question is, who it will be and that will need to be decided.”
“I think it’s very likely that he would be in the cabinet already but which one, well that would take a while to, to account,” Lee said when asked he was close to finding a successor.
Lee was speaking ahead of a visit to the US starting Sunday — including a meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House.
Local media and analysts say Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat and Chan Chun Sing, a former army chief and a minister in the prime minister’s office, are among potential successors.
Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam could be a candidate, although he has repeatedly said he does not want the job and he would be a surprise choice because he is a member of the minority ethnic Indian community. Singapore’s leader since independence has always been a member of the majority Chinese community.
Questions about succession in the wealthy Southeast Asian city state — which has been governed by the People’s Action Party since independence in 1965 — came into focus when Lee, who has twice survived cancer, took ill during a televised speech last year and stumbled at a podium.
Doctors subsequently said there were no serious concerns.
Lee Kuan Yew’s successor, Goh Chok Tong, was identified at least five years in advance while the current leader, who first entered politics in 1984, was also groomed for the position long before he took office in 2004.
Prime Minister Lee said he was saddened by a feud with his siblings which played out in the public earlier this year over the fate of Lee Kuan Yew’s family home.
“The matter is in abeyance. I’m not sure if it’s solved,” Lee said in the CNBC interview, adding he and his siblings had not recently communicated.
Lee Hsien Yang and sister Lee Wei Ling accused their elder brother of abusing state power to try to save the house as a historic monument in defiance of his father’s wishes.
The prime minister called for an extraordinary special sitting of parliament in July and subsequently said that debate failed to find any substantiated evidence of abuse of power. He has said the government must decide what to do with the property.
“Perhaps one day when emotions have subsided, some movement will be possible. These things take time,” Lee said.
Singapore PM Lee says ready to step down in couple of years; no successor picked yet
Singapore PM Lee says ready to step down in couple of years; no successor picked yet
Russian strike kills one, wounds 16 in south Ukraine
KYIV: A Russian missile strike overnight killed a woman and wounded 16 people in Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, where Moscow has ramped up aerial attacks, authorities said Tuesday.
Images distributed by first responders showed several buildings engulfed in flames and firefighters working to extinguish the blaze.
“Last night the enemy attacked Mykolaiv. A woman was killed,” emergency services said, adding that 16 people were injured.
Mykolaiv had an estimated pre-war population of just under half a million people and was subjected to heavy bombardment when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukrainian forces pushed back Russian troops from the region in the autumn of 2022.
However Russian forces have continued to strike the riverside town near the Black Sea coast and over recent weeks stepped up fatal aerial attacks on the nearby port city of Odesa, damaging civilian vessels and port facilities.
The Ukrainian air force meanwhile said it had downed 12 out of 17 Iranian-designed attack drones launched by Russia at Ukraine overnight, including over the Mykolaiv region.
Indian foreign minister to visit arch-rival Pakistan
- Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will travel to Islamabad for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit
- Both sides have said no bilateral talks are planned, and Jaishankar’s visit would strictly follow the summit schedule
NEW DELHI: India’s foreign minister flies to Pakistan for a summit on Tuesday, the first visit by New Delhi’s top envoy to its arch-rival neighbor in nearly a decade.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will travel to Islamabad for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit to “represent India at the meeting,” the foreign ministry said Tuesday.
Both sides have said no bilateral talks are planned, and Jaishankar’s visit would strictly follow the SCO schedule.
The two nuclear-armed nations are bitter adversaries, having fought multiple wars since being carved out of the subcontinent’s partition in 1947 following British colonial rule.
The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus — with 16 more countries affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners.”
The SCO is sometimes touted as an alternative to the Western-dominated NATO military alliance.
“India remains actively engaged in the SCO format,” India’s foreign ministry said.
While the SCO has a mandate to discuss security, the Islamabad summit is due to focus on trade, humanitarian and cultural issues.
The last time an Indian foreign minister visited Pakistan was in 2015 when Sushma Swaraj attended a conference on Afghanistan.
The same year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Lahore to meet his then-counterpart Nawaz Sharif, sparking hopes of a thaw in relations with Pakistan.
But relations plummeted in 2019 when Modi’s government revoked the limited autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir — which led Pakistan to suspend bilateral trade and downgrade diplomatic ties with New Delhi.
The Himalayan region, home to a long-running and deadly insurgency against Indian rule, is divided between the two countries and claimed by both in full.
Pakistan’s former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was in India’s Goa in 2023 — also a rare visit — for an SCO meeting where he and Jaishankar were involved in a verbal spat.
The two did not hold a one-on-one meeting.
US, Philippines launch war games a day after China’s Taiwan drills
- The US and Philippines are fielding just over a thousand participants each
- A smaller number of Australian, British, Japanese and South Korean forces are also taking part
MANILA: Thousands of US and Filipino marines launched 10 days of joint exercises in the northern and western Philippines on Tuesday, a day after China held huge drills around Taiwan.
The annual Kamandag, or Venom, exercises are focused on defending the north coast of the Philippine’s main island of Luzon, which lies about 800 kilometers from self-ruled Taiwan.
Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory and has vowed it will never rule out using force to take it, calling Monday’s drills a “stern warning” to “separatist” forces on the island.
The joint US-Filipino exercises come amid a series of escalating confrontations between China and the Philippines over reefs and waters in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost in its entirety.
Philippine Marine Corps commandant Maj. Gen. Arturo Rojas stressed at Tuesday’s opening ceremony in Manila that Kamandag was long planned and had “nothing to do with whatever is happening in the region.”
The drills’ primary focus will be live-fire exercises along Luzon’s north coast, while other activities will be conducted on tiny Philippine islands between Luzon and Taiwan.
“It’s a coastal defense doctrine. The doctrine says that a would-be aggressor might be directed toward our territory,” Filipino exercise director Brig.-General Vicente Blanco told reporters.
“We are not exercising to join the fight (over Taiwan),” he added.
US Marines representative Col. Stuart Glenn said the exercises were aimed at helping the United States and its allies respond to “any crisis or contingencies.”
The western Philippine island of Palawan, facing the disputed South China Sea, will also host part of the drills.
The US and Philippines are fielding just over a thousand participants each, while smaller numbers of Australian, British, Japanese and South Korean forces are also taking part.
An amphibious landing and training on how to defend against chemical and biological warfare were also among the activities planned, according to a press kit.
As the war games began Tuesday, the Philippine government announced that one of its civilian patrol vessels had sustained minor damage on October 11 when it was “deliberately sideswiped” by a “Chinese Maritime Militia” vessel.
The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources said the collision, which dented the front right section of the BRP Datu Cabaylo, took place about 9.3 kilometers (5.8 miles) from Thitu, a Philippine-garrisoned island in the Spratly group.
The crew were unhurt and later sailed the vessel to Thitu and completed their routine maritime patrol mission, the statement said.
Beijing has for years sought to expand its presence in contested areas of the sea, brushing aside an international ruling that its claim to most of the waterway has no legal basis.
China has deployed military and coast guard vessels in recent months in a bid to eject the Philippines from a trio of other strategically important reefs and islands in the South China Sea.
How did killing at Sikh temple lead to Canada and India expelling each other’s diplomats?
- India rejects Ottawa’s allegations it is involved in killing of Sikh separatist in Canada
- Hardeep Singh Nijjar was local leader in movement to create independent Sikh homeland
NEW DELHI: Relations between India and Canada are at a low point as the countries expelled each other’s top diplomats over an ongoing dispute about the killing of a Sikh activist in Canada.
Canada said it had identified India’s top diplomat in the country as a person of interest in an assassination plot and expelled him and five other diplomats Monday. India has rejected the accusations as absurd, and its foreign ministry said it was expelling Canada’s acting high commissioner and five other diplomats in response.
It’s the latest in an escalating dispute over the June 2023 killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
What is the dispute about?
Nijjar was fatally shot in his pickup truck in June 2023 after he left the Sikh temple he led in the city of Surrey, British Columbia. An Indian-born citizen of Canada, he owned a plumbing business and was a leader in a movement to create an independent Sikh homeland, which is banned in India.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September 2023 there were credible allegations that India’s government had links to the killing. India denied the allegations at the time but said Nijjar was involved in “terrorism.”
How did relations get to this point?
Canada expelled an Indian diplomat over the dispute last year, and in response India expelled a Canadian diplomat and froze consular services for Canadians for nearly two months.
Tensions boiled over again in May, when Canadian police said they had arrested three Indian nationals accused of involvement in Nijjar’s killing and were “investigating if there are any ties to the government of India.” India rejected the allegations, saying Canada had a “political compulsion” to blame India.
What changed on Monday?
Now, Canada says that India’s top diplomat in the country is a person of interest in the killing, and that police have uncovered evidence of an intensifying campaign against Canadian citizens by agents of the Indian government.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said it had found evidence of the involvement of Indian agents “in serious criminal activity in Canada,” including links “to homicides and violent acts” and interference in Canada’s democratic processes, among other things.
Meanwhile, Canada’s foreign minister, Mélanie Joly, tied the Indian officials to Nijjar’s assassination and said Canada had gathered “ample, clear and concrete evidence which identified six individuals as persons of interest in the Nijjar case.”
She said India had been asked to waive diplomatic immunity and cooperate in the investigation but refused.
In a statement Monday, India’s foreign ministry said that the Canadian government “has not shared a shred of evidence” with the Indian government, “despite many requests from our side.” The ministry also called the accusations part of “a deliberate strategy of smearing India for political gains.”
Who was Nijjar?
Nijjar was a local leader in what remains of a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland known as Khalistan. The Khalistan movement is banned in India, but has support among the Sikh diaspora, particularly in Canada.
India designated Nijjar a terrorist in 2020, and at the time of his death was seeking his arrest for alleged involvement in an attack on a Hindu priest in India.
New Delhi’s anxieties about Sikh separatist groups in Canada have long been a strain on the relationship, but the two countries have maintained strong defense and trade ties, and share strategic concerns over China’s global ambitions. However, India has increasingly accused Canada of giving free rein to Sikh separatists.
Son of Singapore’s founding PM Lee Kuan Yew says plans to demolish family home
- Lee Kuan Yew’s three children were split on what to do with their father’s home after his death in 2015
- Lee Hsien Yang says the single-story bungalow should be demolished in accordance with their father’s wishes
SINGAPORE: The youngest child of Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said on Tuesday he would apply to demolish the statesman’s home in line with his wishes, following the death of Lee’s daughter last week.
Lee Kuan Yew’s three children, one of whom is Singapore’s third Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, were split on what to do with their father’s home after his death in 2015, in a public spat that saw the siblings estranged.
Eldest son Lee Hsien Loong, who stepped down as Singapore’s prime minister earlier this year, thought it should be up to the government to decide what to do with the property, including potentially retaining it as a heritage landmark.
However his sister, Lee Wei Ling, who died on Oct. 9, and younger brother Lee Hsien Yang say the single-story bungalow, built in 1898 in central Singapore, should be demolished in accordance with their father’s wishes.
“After my sister’s passing, I am the only living executor of my father Lee Kuan Yew’s estate,” Lee Hsien Yang wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.
“In his will, he wished for the house to be demolished ‘immediately after’ Wei Ling moved out of the house. It is my duty to carry out his wishes to the fullest extent of the law.”
He said he would apply to demolish the house and planned to build a small private dwelling to be retained by the family, adding that it was time for the government to approve the demolition.
The office of current prime minister Lawrence Wong did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lee Kuan Yew told the Straits Times newspaper in 2011 that he wanted the house demolished because it would “become a shambles” if it were opened to the public, and he hoped its removal would improve land values in the neighborhood.
In 2018, a ministerial committee set up to consider the future of the house laid out three options, and said the decision would be left to a future government.
The options were to retain the property by gazetting it as a national monument or for conservation, retain the basement dining room which has the greatest historical significance and tear down the rest of the property, or allow the property to be fully demolished for redevelopment.
At that time, Lee Hsien Loong said he accepted the committee’s conclusion and the range of options laid out.
