Major Cabinet reshuffle, but it's not the time to read tea leaves

While the Cabinet reshuffle announced yesterday sees new faces helming seven out of 15 ministries, what has dominated online chatter are the movements of the key fourth-generation (4G) leaders - specifically Mr Lawrence Wong from Education Minister to Finance Minister, Mr Chan Chun Sing from Trade and Industry to helm Education, and Mr Ong Ye Kung from Transport to the Health Ministry.

There has been much reading of the tea leaves.

Does the plum finance post mean Mr Wong is very much in the running to be a future prime minister?

Why is Mr Ong being moved to the health portfolio in the middle of the ongoing pandemic, and barely nine months after he took on transport?

Likewise, would Mr Chan's replacement of Mr Wong in the Ministry of Education give him a higher public profile than his previous externally focused trade portfolio?

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, speaking at an Istana news conference, was quick to scotch the talk of political power play.

He pointed out that as a planned change was going to be made after Budget 2021 to the finance portfolio - a "major piece on the chessboard" and currently held by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat - the latest redeployments are a consequence of this upcoming vacancy.

Thus, the moves affecting, among others, Mr Wong and Mr Ong, even though they had been in their respective appointments for only a short time.

PM Lee also said that he appointed ministers "where they can best make a contribution".

The explanation will, of course, not stop the public from stirring, or spilling, the tea, especially in the wake of Mr Heng's surprise announcement two weeks ago that he was stepping aside as leader of the 4G team.

PM Lee acknowledged that this was an earlier-than-normal reshuffle of his team, which came together last July, shortly after the 2020 General Election. Major Cabinet changes have typically been made around the midterm mark of the Government taking office.

But for anyone expecting the tea leaves to spell out the identity of the successor to PM Lee, the one reality is that the latest round of appointments does not.

In this regard, there are four things worth noting.

First, the distinction between "heavyweight" and "lightweight" ministries is artificial in a Vuca (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world.

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown how intimately connected the work of all the ministries is. Finance, health, trade, transport - every sector was battered by the crisis, and it truly required a collective effort by all for businesses and Singaporeans to emerge stronger.

In this context, the latest movements are not about grooming rock stars, but about stretching each 4G leader to develop well-rounded strengths to cope with a rapidly changing world.

In his time in the multi-ministry task force (MTF) on Covid-19, for instance, Mr Wong has shown that he can make tough decisions without being abrasive or causing public opprobrium.

This will be a valuable quality when, as Finance Minister, he has to communicate the need for the goods and services tax (GST) hike slated to take place between next year and 2025.

Mr Chan may have wrangled the world's largest trade deal - the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership involving Singapore and 14 other countries - but it is never easy to put a human face to abstract concepts such as "Asean centrality" and "making supply chains more resilient".

The education portfolio will allow him to show a softer, creative side, and provide ample opportunities to meet and engage parents about what they care most about: their children's future.

Mr Chan is in good company. Both Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Mr Heng were popular education ministers who left their mark by leading reforms for a more flexible education system.

There are also synergies between education and the economy, given the strong focus on lifelong learning and reskilling for a post-Covid-19 future.

Second, statistically speaking, the Finance Minister is not a shoo-in for the nation's top political post.

Of Singapore's eight previous finance ministers, including Mr Tharman, Mr Heng, Dr Goh Keng Swee, Dr Richard Hu and Dr Tony Tan, only one - Mr Lee Hsien Loong - became prime minister.

Mr Wong is a logical choice for the post because he had a hand in the finance portfolio over the last five years and steered tax-related Bills through Parliament.

As PM Lee noted: "Lawrence has been assisting Swee Keat as Second Minister since 2016, so he has the experience, and is a natural fit for the job."

But Mr Wong still has a mountain to climb - from persuading Singaporeans to accept the GST hike and dealing with repeated calls from the opposition to loosen the fiscal spigots, to unfavourable developments on the international tax front that could squeeze the Republic's corporate tax revenues.

Third, there is continuity amid change, even if the latter is what many are fixated on.

Mr Wong, who remains co-chair of the MTF - with the incoming Mr Ong - will be an important source of institutional memory and expertise as countries around the world grapple with a devastating resurgence of the coronavirus.

Mr Desmond Lee continues to helm National Development, ensuring that a steady hand will continue to steer political hot-potato issues such as housing and, more recently, the preservation of green spaces. These are issues of keen interest, especially to younger voters, whom the ruling party knows it must woo.

Key 3G leaders such as Dr Ng Eng Hen, Mr K. Shanmugam and Dr Vivian Balakrishnan retain important defence, security and foreign affairs portfolios.

Mr Gan Kim Yong, a Ministry of Trade and Industry veteran, will effectively be returning to his old stomping ground to oversee the country's economic recovery.

Finally, and most importantly, PM Lee issued a clarion call for teamwork.

Asked for his expectations of both ministers who will co-chair the task force, he replied: "I expect all of them to work closely together and cooperate, to make sure that policies are well coordinated and nothing slips through the cracks."

This is how the entire Cabinet has to work, he added.

"You are doing your part, but at the same time, you are covering for one another, so that when a problem comes up, we deal with the problem holistically - not just each person tackling his piece and leaving gaps in between, or overlaps and conflicts between the different ministries," he said.

This is not just about gauging Mr Ong and Mr Wong's working chemistry in the MTF.

Writ large, it is about the 4G leaders' ability to lean in and coalesce around their new leader before the next general election due in 2025.

The die is not cast, but it should be cast soon. Any final tweaks to the political line-up ideally ought to be made around the midterm mark of this Government's term, which is just two years from now.

When Mr Heng launched the Singapore Together movement two years ago, it was with the intent for all Singaporeans to work together to build a shared future. No one anticipated then that a pandemic would sweep the world, that the nation's economy and social cohesion would be challenged so severely, or that he would step aside this soon from his role as leader of the 4G team.

The Covid-19 crisis is a golden opportunity for the country to emerge from the ashes better, kinder and stronger.

To this end, and trite as it may sound, every ministry and minister matters. How cohesively the 4G leadership team works together matters.

And that, for Singapore's sake, is what really matters too.