At the post-elections press conference on Saturday morning, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced that he will assemble his new cabinet within the next two weeks, and expects to unveil his team after Sept 24.
We at Three and a Half Stars are devout players of Fantasy Premier League, and see many similarities between appointing cabinet ministers and fielding the best XI. Thus, we've designed a simple prediction game with a fantasy football-inspired scoring system to guess who will emerge as the next batch of leaders for Singapore post-GE2015. To keep things as simple as possible, this game will not take into account 2nd ministers for the various ministries.
The team under PM Lee:
11 first-team players + five substitutes for the 15 ministries + PMO. (if you have no idea what these ministries are, take a look at the Cabinet website)
And since the transport minister is the hot seat in the cabinet now following the departure of Mr Lui Tuck Yew, there will be a bonus multiplier of x2 of the total score for correctly predicting his successor.
Assembling a good squad in the actual fantasy football game requires a lot of attention to detail, and this includes players' injury records, the team's recent performances and past seasons' history against opponents. Similarly, a lot of research went into the selection process for PM Lee's team. For starters, his quote on Saturday was fairly important:
"I think that the first order of the day is to form a new Cabinet, and to bring in the new faces and also to reshuffle my Cabinet so that the younger members are put into positions of greater responsibility quickly.
And I want that to be done in this term."
One thing for certain is that the government is very transparent with information about its ministers. We scrolled through dozens of education and career profiles readily available online, and extracted crucial information to draw mindmaps that Homeland 's CIA agent Carrie Mathison would be proud of.
After hours of intensive research and deliberation, we present to you our fantasy cabinet teams below. These predictions do not in any way reflect the true Cabinet appointment process and definitely should not be taken seriously, if you don't yet already know.
Yufeng K. (Last season's Fantasy EPL rank: 97092)
Total possible points: 68
*Only four substitutes as K. Shanmugam is predicted to retain his Law Minister portfolio."I went with a 4-2-3-1 formation because, like Manchester United, the ruling party is the team everyone loves to hate. Instead of making the Transport Minister position a poisoned chalice, I would instead go with a charm offensive by picking Josephine Teo who has previous experience as an understudy so there's no need to rock the boat. Also, one more female player!"
Qijian E. (Last season's Fantasy EPL rank: 185605)
Total possible points: 56
"Whoever fills the Transport Minister position could cause a change reaction in the other ministries. It will be down to fielding either a highly experienced player or one who is developing quickly. And as team manager I opted for the former by picking Khaw Boon Wan who has had a good record in the Health and National Development ministries."
Ben L. (Last season's Fantasy EPL rank: 561376)
Total possible points: 68
*Only four substitutes as K. Shanmugam is predicted to retain his Law Minister portfolio."As team manager I would use the transport position to accelerate the development of a future leader, in the same way that Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger recalled young Francis Coquelin, who was on loan at Charlton, and threw him into the crucial defensive midfield role - a move which has brought surprising results. Picking someone like Chan Chun Sing would demonstrate the manager's determination to deliver excellence on all fronts."
Do you think we're on point with our predictions? Who will be in your first XI? Tell us in the comments below. P.S As we are an entertainment site, please refrain from discussing politics outside of the scope of this article on this domain. The admin reserves the right to remove any comment deemed in violation of this rule. Thank you for your understanding.
