India-Singapore ties will shine under Prime Minister Lawrence Wong

The son has set in Singapore. But the rising sun is expected to shine brightly on Singapore’s relations with India. 

The city-state's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, son of Lee Kuan Yew, the architect and founding father of modern Singapore, presided over his final Cabinet meeting on May 9. Lawrence Wong will take over from Lee Junior as Head of Government on May 15. It will be a watershed moment for one of the most prosperous countries in Asia. 

In January 1996, Lee Senior addressed an invited group of Delhiites at the Indian International Centre (IIC), and typically, did not mince his words. “India is a nation of unfulfilled greatness. Its potential has lain fallow, under-used.” This author was in the audience, which was overwhelmingly affected when the Senior Lee confessed that he cried on August 9, 1965, after Malaysia expelled Singapore from the federated country and was left to fend for itself. “We had nothing,” he said. “Riots and violence between Malays and Chinese were frequent.”

As Singapore ushers in its fourth Prime Minister as a republic, the people of this island country can look back on how successfully it has travelled from such plaintive conditions to becoming Asia’s most dynamic financial centre, which also skilfully juggles geopolitics.

The moment of Wong’s assumption of prime ministerial office is coincidentally one to celebrate the perspicacity of Indian diplomacy. Wong is 4G — nothing to do with telecommunications. He has been among the fourth generation of leaders since Singapore became a republic. Among them were several contenders to succeed Lee Junior. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who was High Commissioner in Singapore for two years from 2007, identified Wong as future Prime Minister material and befriended him zealously. When Jaishankar arrived in Singapore, Wong was Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Lee.

This was not the first time that India spotted future leaders in key countries and invested in them. Indira Gandhi was told in 1980 that Ali Khamenei was among the potential successors of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It would be almost a decade before that happened. Although Khamenei was a holder of a minor office in 1980, the then Prime Minister invited him to India as a guest of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and subsequently directed the Indian Mission in Tehran to cultivate him.

As Deputy Chief of Mission in Tokyo in 1996, Jaishankar wrote to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) that Shinzo Abe, who had made his début as a member of Japan’s House of Representatives, would be prime minister one day. The MEA, which claims vast expertise on Japan, did not take its second-ranking diplomat in Tokyo seriously. A decade later, when Abe visited New Delhi as a civil servant, he sought a meeting with then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The MEA conveyed its impertinence that a mere bureaucrat, howsoever senior, should seek a meeting with the all-powerful Prime Minister of India. Abe approached Jaishankar – who was no longer dealing with Japan – and he arranged the meeting via the backdoor through Sanjaya Baru, Singh’s media adviser. Spotting Abe as Prime Minister material way back when he was a legislative backbencher and creating a special relationship helped in successfully steering India-Japan ties during the successive tenures of Singh and Narendra Modi.

Singapore is India’s best friend in Southeast Asia. It punches above its weight — rather size — in helping advance New Delhi’s ‘Act East’ goals. When Jaishankar visited Singapore in March, his longest meeting was with Wong, who had become deputy prime minister in addition to his responsibilities since 2021 as finance minister. Three weeks after that carefully structured dialogue, Lee Junior announced that he would step down as prime minister in favour of Wong on May 15.

Three months after becoming heir apparent, Wong visited New Delhi for the first time as deputy prime minister. As Lee Junior’s designated successor, Wong felt that given India’s current political equations, his understanding of this country would remain incomplete unless he travelled to Gujarat.

So, he went to Modi’s home state twice. One time, the excuse was feeble. The Awards Ceremony for a Singapore-India Hackathon, for which the presence of any junior minister would have sufficed. But then, Singaporeans are thorough when they set about a task. A deep and abiding friendship and collaboration with India is one such task which the island country set for itself as soon as Finance Minister Manmohan Singh unveiled his milestone economic reforms three decades ago. 

(K P Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.