Whenever I speak to my dad, I inevitably get drawn into long conversations on Singapore politics. Like many Singaporeans his age, my dad loves to complain about how today’s 4G leaders are not as competent as Lee Kuan Yew (henceforth LKY) and his first-generation cabinet.

One day, I finally bit the bullet. “How exactly are our current leaders different?” I asked my dad. In a trice, he whipped out his phone to play a YouTube video clearly bookmarked in anticipation of this moment. The video begins with LKY’s now-famous, or infamous, depending on who you ask, speech after breaking up a Singapore Airlines Pilots’ Association strike. The pilots were demanding a 30 percent pay hike and Lee answered their demands in person, threatening to ground the entire airline and drag the pilots through the mud. In the speech, Lee delivers a performance for the ages. Jaw clenched, every muscle in his body taut and right index finger jabbing the air menacingly, he snarls: “Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him, or give it up! This is not a game of cards. This is YOUR life and mine!” 

My dad pauses the video and lectures me, “You see how he speaks? Now you see how this clown talks!” The video resumes and cuts to Lee Hsien Loong at a 2015 General Election (GE) rally repeating his father’s iconic line. But something is amiss. The junior Lee is clearly struggling to channel his father’s gusto. The wrong syllables are emphasised and the delivery stilted; he sounds more like an awkward teenager than an iron-willed statesman. My dad, having made his case with a single cherry-picked comparison, smirks, “Look at them, can only copy, no originality”. The comments under the video echo the same sentiment.

Undoubtedly, I feel a certain sympathy for Lee Hsien Loong in this situation. Living under his father’s shadow was bound to result in embarrassing moments such as this. Yet, the video does raise the interesting question of whether there are indeed distinct rhetorical differences among Singapore’s political leaders. Differences so acute that they end up inadvertently shaping broader voter perceptions of Singapore politics.

The study of political rhetoric has a rich tradition, drawing scholars from political science, linguistics and anthropology. Research in this field has traced the evolution in the speaking styles of politicians across time, polity and language. From the “enigmatic language” of Mao Zedong, consisting of intentionally vague sentences designed to serve as self-mythologising riddles to Franklin D Roosevelt’s famous fireside chats, meticulously constructed to soothe an anxious electorate gripped by the Great Depression while simultaneously criticising his political opponents, rhetorical analysis helps us understand how politicians use language to achieve a variety of ideological objectives. 

Indeed, our historical memory of LKY as a visionary statesman is heavily intertwined with our collective recollection of him as a uniquely gifted orator. Research papers have been written about Lee’s charismatic leadership and the World Economic Forum has an entire page dedicated to his “eloquence”. By contrast, little such praise has been showered upon Lee Hsien Loong. In fact the top result on googling “Lee Hsien Loong’s charisma” is a speech in which he states that “[Singapore] still needs charismatic leaders like [Lee Kuan Yew]”. 

This difference in scholarship is not without merit. Scholars have pointed out that LKY developed narratives around “Asian Values” and “Confucian Ethics”, allowing him to shield Singapore from external critique by reifying differences between the country’s electoral autocracy and Western liberal democracy. While Lee Hsien Loong and Goh Chok Tong too wielded these narratives in their speeches, their rhetoric rested on the foundations laid by Lee Senior.

Meanwhile, contemporary analyses of Singapore’s political rhetoric has shown that current leaders speak primarily in corporate platitudes designed to attract capital from the global market. Their primary motifs are stability and efficiency, best described as “boring in a capillary fashion”. And while this monotony undoubtedly reflects a prioritisation of substance over style, the former does not preclude the latter. If anything, Lee Hsien Loong’s channeling of his father’s words indicates that our political class still desires rhetorical flourish, especially during election season.

This begets the question of just how much Singapore’s political rhetoric has shifted since LKY. Are our current leaders uniquely uncharismatic compared to Lee? And are they becoming increasingly similar and consequently boring? Is the popularity of Tharman Shanmugaratnam partially explainable due to his superior oratory? Advances in computational analysis can help us answer these questions.