Outgoing Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong announced the handover, as promised, several days after returning from an overseas trip.

Lee will be the republic’s third prime minister.

A deputy prime minister since 1990, he is taking over at one of the most challenging junctures of Singapore’s development and, at 52, his ascension has been likened to a generational change in the politics of the island state.

Newsweek named him as a face to watch in 2004, one of 11 persons in the world who will “shape our world in the year to come – and beyond.”

And he is, of course, the son of Asia’s most enduring statesman, Lee Kuan Yew.

Singaporeans say it is a non-event: it was clear that Lee would take over from Goh from the day he was appointed deputy prime minister in 1990.

The understated handover of power is also said to be deliberate, a sort of Singapore-style technocratic change rather than any real shift in political power.

But there was spontaneous excitement among punters, with 4-D permutations of the handover date – 1208 and 0812 – sold out for the day.

Little in Singapore is ever left to chance, and more so something as far-reaching as the premiership.

Nevertheless, an oft-repeated remark over the last few months has been: “What sort of Prime Minister will Lee be?”

One end of the spectrum hopes he will continue to foster that kinder and gentler society that Goh has set in motion.

The other end wonders whether he will revert to a more authoritarian leadership style, or even if he will be the second coming of Kuan Yew.

Goh’s Singapore, said seasoned journalist Seah Chiang Nee, had been a more forgiving society, a less rigid political and civic space, a more consultative government and a people tied to their community and with an emotional stake in their country.

“People want to continue with that,” said Seah.

Lee, said Dr Russell Heng of the Institute of South-East Asian Studies (ISEAS), is going to be prime minister of a very different Singapore from that of Kuan Yew or even of Chok Tong.

The economic downturn that followed the Asian currency crisis has dented Singaporeans’ sense of confidence about their place under the sun although the government recently reported a blistering 11.7% growth rate for the second quarter.

Lee will have to grapple with the high expectations of a new and well-educated generation who have grown up on a diet of comfort and relative affluence.

Lee is quite aware of the apprehension that has preceded his transition.

At the Harvard Club dinner in January this year, he made a speech that some have described as his roadmap for politics and society.

“I have no doubt that society will open further,” he was quoted in the Straits Times of Singapore.

Lee indicated that the government would recede from being all things to all citizens.

He expected people to debate issues with reason, passion and conviction and not be passive bystanders in their own fate. But he stressed that the primary concern of many Singaporeans was still bread-and-butter issues, and the government would not lose sight of this less articulate majority.

Several months later, in his first most extensive response to being endorsed as the next prime minister, Lee said the transition was not just a new man taking over but a generational shift to a team of leaders that would take the country another step forward.

“It's for the whole nation: the first generation who experienced independence, to the second generation who grew up in the past 20 to 30 years, to the third generation now growing up in Singapore. And they will have to take the country to the next century,” he said.

Former Ambassador to Malaysia K. Kesavapany says he is confident Lee will opt for the “Goh model”.

“Lee is his father's son but he grew up in the new era. He knows Singapore has changed,” said Kesavapany, who is now director of ISEAS.

Lee Sr ruled Singapore with two chief ingredients – what he termed superior logic, and fear. He was battling a mind-boggling range of issues – from the communists' racial tensions and militant workers to people who spit and urinated as and where they pleased.

“He had to use the cane. Persuasion alone would not have worked as well as he would have liked,” said Seah, who remembered how he had, as a young Reuters reporter, followed Lee Sr on the campaign trail.

Lee Sr had stopped to ask some shopkeepers for their views on a project, Seah related. They told him if he thought it was good, then that was good enough for them.

The Confucian notion of collective good is unlikely to cut much ice in the Singapore that Lee will preside over.

“The new generation of leaders will still have to rule with superior logic, but not with fear. They have to persuade and convince, and if people still oppose, they have to pull back. They can't ram it through,” Seah said.

Apprehension about Lee has to do in part with his reputation for being uncompromising on key issues and disdainful of populist politics although he is open to well-thought-out criticism.

For instance, a young Singapore intellectual recalled Lee being queried by a Muslim woman at a teachers' forum. When he gave an off-handed answer, the feisty lady came back at him. He then told her that what she had said was a “no-brainer.”

The next day he was a keynote speaker at a gathering on Singapore-Malaysia relations. When it came to question time there was some hesitation till someone stood up to criticise parts of the policy.

He told the critic there was much truth in his comment, and that broke the ice for a lively discussion.

Lee’s challenge, said Deputy Health Minister Dr Balaji Sadasivan, would be to keep the connection with the older generation intact while tuning in to the more complex demands of the younger generation.

Media reports, outside of Singapore that is, still harp on his father’s role in his career, implying a younger man born and groomed for the job and driven by his father's ambitions.

Yet, logically speaking, Lee could not have come this far had he not been driven by his own resolute and ambitions and without his own prodigious abilities.

Lee, who has a first class in Mathematics from Cambridge, served the Singapore Armed Forces for 13 years and retired as a Brigadier-General in 1984.

He contested his first general election the same year and won convincingly in Ang Mo Kio.

His rise in Singapore politics has been described as rocket-like. He was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in 1990, chairman of the powerful Monetary Authority of Singapore in 1998 and Finance Minister in 2001.

Even those in the opposition admit he has few parallels when it comes to his role in the government. He has headed two economic review committees in the face of two economic downswings, experiences that have placed him a tested and accomplished lead.

“He has delivered and I think he will be a formidable PM. My apprehension is that his father is still in the picture,” said Ibrahim Ariff, president of the Singapore National Front, an opposition party of sorts.

There is the perception that Lee has had it too easy but, said a senior Singapore journalist: “I've often felt he's a privileged yet tragic figure.”

As the first-born of Kuan Yew, he was brought up, in a way, as a first among equals.

Yet, his personal life has not been spared tragedy and challenge. His first wife died in 1982 and he was downed by lymphoma in 1992.

He remarried in 1985 and his wife Ho Ching now heads the government investment arm Temasek. She is probably there on her own merit but the political costs will mount after he becomes premier.

Lee was given a clean bill of health in 1997. The illness, some said, had a maturing effect on him, lending him a certain vulnerability to balance his exacting side.

Today, the father of four is a youthful and good-looking 52, fit, energetic and exceptionally confident of himself.

His studious-looking spectacles have been replaced by contact lenses to improve eye contact, his once barber-cropped hair restyled in a more contemporary look and, when he has to, he strikes a rather dashing figure in his suits and matching neckties.

He now smiles more easily and is said to be quite charming when he chooses to be.

It has been said that he has his mother's intuition and facility with words and his father's logical cut.

It has not been easy to shake off his reputation as a blunt-speaking, ultra rational leader but there has been a conscious effort to appear more approachable and he has begun to let his softer side shine through.

Much was made of his donning a crimson shirt and the tears he shed during an interview where he spoke of his late first wife.

But there are some who find this immensely ironic.

Goh was criticised for being too soft when the opposition gained an inch of ground in his first general election as Prime Minister.

Now, Lee who is on the threshold of premiership finds himself having to tone down his tough guy image.

But image may be the least of his challenges as Prime Minister.

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