Why did Singapore PM gamble popularity on ‘double minority’ President Halimah Yacob?

Fresh from a landslide victory at the general election, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was flush with political capital last year when he floated sweeping constitutional changes that would ensure an ethnic Malay became the city state’s eighth president.

Lee made public his intention to broaden minority representation in the office of the president, a largely ceremonial position, in a January 2016 speech at the opening of the new parliament. His People’s Action Party (PAP) was in its strongest position in years after securing 70 per cent of the popular vote in the snap poll four months earlier – a significant feat even for a party in power more than five decades.

The premier said that in the Chinese-majority, multiracial city state of 5.6 million people, it was “important that minorities have a chance to be elected president, and that this happens regularly”.

Fast-forward 21 months and Lee’s objective seems to have been met – on paper at least: Halimah Yacob, parliament speaker when Lee delivered that key address, quit the position last month, and on Thursday was inaugurated as the republic’s first woman president and the second Malay to hold office as head of state.

The 63-year-old former PAP stalwart is a trained lawyer and a Muslim who wears the hijab. She was declared head of state in an effectively uncontested election a day earlier after her two rivals were disqualified for not meeting strict financial criteria.

In Singapore, how Malay is Malay?