Non-Chinese Singapore PM only a matter of time: Dy PM

After 50 years of nationhood, it is only a matter of time before Singapore sees a prime minister from an ethnic minority, including Indian, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said on Friday.

“It is inevitable that at some point, a minority prime minister - Indian, Malay, Eurasian, or some mixture - is going to be a feature of the political landscape because we have meritocracy, it is an open system, it is just a matter of time,” said Tharman, who himself is of Sri Lankan Tamil- origin.

The deputy premier, who is also the Finance Minister, said as he responded to a question from Washington Post columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria on whether Singapore could see an Indian prime minister.

Zakaria was chairing the lunchtime dialogue at the Institute of Policy Studies’ SG50+ Conference to discuss what lies ahead for Singapore, the city-state that boasts of people belonging to different ethnicities.

Singapore celebrated its 50 years of independence today.

<g data-gr-id="16">Tharman</g> began his answer candidly by stating that he <g data-gr-id="17">need</g> not leave the stage as he is not interested in the <g data-gr-id="18">job,</g> but added that it was inevitable that Singapore will have a minority Prime Minister.

“Singapore is evolving, the common space that everyone is growing up in is much larger than pre-independence or even in our early decades,” local media quoted <g data-gr-id="15">Tharman</g> as saying.