SINGAPORE - Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will deliver his last major political speech as head of government at the annual May Day Rally on the morning of May 1.

This comes a fortnight before he is set to pass the baton to Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, who will be sworn in as the Republic’s fourth prime minister, at a ceremony to be held at the Istana on May 15.

PM Lee is expected to make the main address at the rally, which will be held at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre.

This follows the pattern seen in 2004, when then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong returned after a three-year hiatus to deliver this major speech just before he relinquished office on Aug 12 that year.

Between 2001 and 2003, Mr Lee had fronted the May Day Rally addresses as deputy prime minister.

Mr Wong did not get the same runway as DPM Heng Swee Keat, who was initially poised to succeed PM Lee up until April 2021, when he decided to step aside as the leader of the People’s Action Party’s fourth-generation (4G) team to make way for someone younger.

Mr Wong – who was endorsed as the new leader of the 4G team in April 2022 and promoted to DPM in June that year – thus had only 2023 to deliver the keynote speech at the May Day Rally as PM-in-waiting.

While Mr Wong had stepped up by delivering his maiden speech at the May Day Rally in 2022, it was PM Lee who helmed the main speech that year.

More than 1,400 union leaders and tripartite partners of the National Trades Union Congress are expected to attend the rally, which is taking place amid a rise in retrenchments, high inflation and rising interest rates.

In the lead-up to the rally, PM Lee met unionists, who reflected on their cautious optimism about the labour market, he said in a Facebook post on April 17.

Topics discussed during those meetings included how recent developments in other parts of the world and in their sectors were affecting workers and businesses, and the importance of staying competitive and resilient, he said in the post.

Adding that the unionists had also given their “heartwarming wishes” on the upcoming leadership transition, PM Lee signed off by saying: “Singapore will be in good hands under the 4G team.”