Early Political Career
In the 1980s, Lee was regarded as one of the next key leaders in the People's Action Party (PAP) leadership transition that was taking place in the mid-1980s, as Lee Kuan Yew had declared that he would eventually step down as Prime Minister in 1984. Following the Singaporean general election, 1984, all the old Central Executive Committee members had resigned on 1 January 1985, except for Lee Kuan Yew himself.
Lee was elected a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1984 at the age of 32. Following his election, he was appointed a Minister of State at the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Defence by his father, who was the Prime Minister at the time.
In 1985, Lee chaired the government's Economic Committee, which recommended changes to established government policies to reduce business costs, foster longer-term growth and revive the Singapore economy, which was experiencing a recession at the time. The committee's recommendations included reductions in corporate and personal taxes and the introduction of a consumption tax.
In 1986, Lee was made the Acting Minister for Trade and Industry. In 1987, he became a full member of the Cabinet as the Minister for Trade and Industry and Second Minister for Defence.
Lee was the chairman of the PAP Youth Committee, the predecessor to the Young PAP, when it was established in 1986, while he was still a brigadier-general. The PAP had been undergoing leadership transition, and many of its key leaders were aging, with younger replacements scarce. PAP branches were urged to recruit 40-50 members each. Lee envisioned there would be a lot of young people who were "idealistic, patriotic, nationalistic, keen to work for the nation." Lee's goal was to maintain the preeminence of the PAP such that "when the people think about the government of Singapore, if they think about the future of Singapore, then they will think about the PAP". Lee also said that the youth wing would be a channel in which the youth could communicate dissent, in which otherwise they might be "tempted" to vote for the opposition political parties and bring the PAP government down.
Read more about this topic: Lee Hsien Loong
Famous quotes containing the words early, political and/or career:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)