SM Teo on his post-retirement plans & being optimistic about S’pore’s future – Mothership.SG
A public servant, explains Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean, must be the kind of person who derives happiness from seeing other people happy.
At 70, Teo is tall, stoic, and appears every inch the Chief of Navy he was before entering politics. Frankly, he doesn’t seem the people-pleasing sort.
But over the course of his exit interview on May 20, he repeatedly mentions a few points: Unity, not division. Building, not repudiation.
The former Member of Parliament (MP) for Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC announced his retirement from politics during the 2025 General Election. He has not pinpointed any specific endeavours he will pursue after stepping down.
But he intends to “support the 4G in whatever way [Prime Minister Lawrence Wong] thinks I can be most helpful”.
“All in good time,” he says of his plans for the future.
“My objective is to do my best to help the 4G succeed, because they’re good people, they’re able people, and I want them to succeed.
We want them to succeed, because we want Singapore to succeed.”
People and politics
As a child, Teo wanted to be a firefighter when he grew up.
“My father brought me to one of those exhibitions, when the old Kallang Airport closed down…I climbed into a fire engine and I wanted to be a fireman,” he shares.
While he never became a firefighter, he did go on to fight several (figurative) fires.
It started with his entry into politics. He recalls a conversation about leadership renewal he had with then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.
“He said, ‘Do you enjoy your job?’ and I said yes, I do. He said, ‘you respect your minister?’ and I said yes, I do.”
“Then he said, what happens if you don’t have a good minister?”
Back then, Teo saw the need. He stepped up.
It’s that attitude — a thick skin and an objective, “firm but fair” manner — that later led him to sit on a number of ministerial and inter-ministerial committees. Some were more sensitive than others, like that of the Oxley Road saga, and led to him being questioned publicly.
For instance, at the time of the dispute, The Straits Times editor-at-large Han Fook Kwang asked if it was “wise or necessary” for ministers to be involved in such matters. (Teo personally responded to the article).
But Teo takes it all in stride.
“Sometimes people will accuse you of all kinds of things. But I think in the end, you need to look at things objectively. To be firm and fair,” he says.
People and policies
Some of Teo’s most memorable achievements were from his time as Minister for Education, between 1997 and 2003.
Under his leadership, the teaching career scheme was revamped and the teaching force professionalised. He also gave teachers proper staff rooms with their own workstations — “one of the things I’m happiest about”, he says.
But it’s people, not policies, that he remembers best about his time in politics.
“For politics in Singapore, you are a Member of Parliament first before you are a Minister. So you cannot make policy and then go hide in your ivory tower,” he says.
“You have to meet your residents.”
He recalls how when he first went to Pasir Ris in 1997, there were “prams and babies everywhere”. It’s with some nostalgia that he remembers the children’s parties, the magic shows, the kindergartens.
“Now, when I go around, I see more wheelchairs… and PWDs,” he quips.
“When I first saw that, I thought, oh dear. But then I thought, oh that’s very good. Because it means that my residents, even as they grow old, can come out and join the community, and continue to enjoy the community life and friendships they used to have.”
The babies may be older, but they’re not altogether gone. Some of his residents that he knew as children have since grown up and moved into BTO flats in Pasir Ris as well.
It’s a point of personal satisfaction for him.
“Sometimes I see families where both the husband and the wife, newly married, they say they took photographs with me when they were in kindergarten. It’s quite nice, quite cute,” he says with a smile.
Optimism about the future
While Teo is vague about his own plans for the future, he’s more confident about Singapore’s.
At several points in the interview, he shares his observations from this past General Election: Identity politics. External conflicts and issues being imported into Singapore. Even attempts at foreign interference.
Domestically, he saw political parties “try to outbid each other”, making appeals to certain groups of voters and promising to champion their interests in exchange for support.
These are things to be wary about, he says. “We came out as an independent country from Malaysia because of issues like this.”
So with all this in mind, is he optimistic that Singapore will succeed?
“You know, I am optimistic,” he replies.
He alludes to his time as Minister of Education, when they started National Education and people asked what the objective was. “So I said, the objective is to have a well-founded confidence in our own future.”
It isn’t blind optimism, with dreams and imagination that cannot be realised. It’s not empty pessimism, fuelled by fear.
“We have many strengths today. We have found a formula, over many years, which helps us to be united, to synergise, multiple our strengths. So that we can stand up in the world, and be taken seriously by others.
And this is something which we should continue to build on.”
Leadership renewal
Teo gives another example: When he left Mindef, his staff threw him a farewell party. He told them that when he left, he would “sleep peacefully at night”.
It’s not because he managed to finish all the work he wanted to do; “work never finishes”, he says at one point. There will always be more work to do.
Leadership renewal, after all, is really about faith.
Back then, he trusted he was leaving his ministry in good hands; he put his faith in the next generation to make the correct judgments and the right decisions.
That same faith is why he’s stepping down now, 33 years after entering politics.
“You can’t depend on somebody going out somewhere and finding the Elixir of Eternal Life, and therefore that’s your key to continuity and stability. It doesn’t happen,” he says.
While he doesn’t say explicitly why he’s stepping down, he hints at it. When you become an MP, he says, you commit to your residents to work for them — a “hundred plus per cent”.
“You must have the energy, the stamina to do that for the full five years, not just nine or ten days in the election,” he adds.
“If you can see that there are people who can serve your residents, more energetically and better than you can, then you should let your residents be served by them.”
He says all this in his classic no-nonsense manner, without any self-pity or regret.
Or perhaps there is a touch of bittersweet aptness. I’m not sure.
Being an MP is difficult, working at a hundred percent is tough, let alone a “hundred plus per cent”.
Would anyone be happy to acknowledge the fact that another person might be better at serving residents, the thing you had taken so much pride in for so long?
Perhaps not.
Unless, of course, you’re the kind of person who derives happiness from seeing other people happy.
Top image by Khoo Wen-en
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