Friday, August 03, 2012

Assoc Prof Dr Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim the next Malay PAP Minister?

The latest Singapore’s cabinet shuffle has thrown the spotlight on two matters:
a)            political renewal within PAP

b)            female PAP leadership

For the 1st matter: political renewal within PAP, many Singaporeans’ eyes are on the 3 political new rising stars: Chan Chun Sing, Tan Chuan-Jin and Lawrence Wong. For the 2nd matter: female PAP leadership, Singaporeans have at last a female Minister after the General Election 2011 in Grace Fu. My personal feeling is that Josephine Teo will be the next female Minister.

But before I digress further, I will like to share my thoughts on another spotlight that may not be that prominent, that is on the state of Malay PAP leadership succession. With the announcement on 31 Jul 12, Assoc Prof Dr Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, an academic in Real Estate of NUS is inducted into political office, being a Parliament Secretary for Health and Transport.

Currently, there is only 1 Malay PAP Minister: Dr Yaacob Ibrahim and only a handful of Malay political office holders in parliament. I think the next highest-ranking Malay PAP leader is Mr Hawazi, a Minister-of-State. There is also one Senior Parliament Secretary in Maliki who also helmed the mayorship of South East Constituency.

I feel that given his age, Assoc Prof Dr Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim may be groomed for political leadership. There are also some similarities between Assoc Prof Dr Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim and Dr Yaacob Ibrahim in that both are PhD holders and hail from academic backgrounds.

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