Deputy PM Lee says he can do top job

Deputy PM Lee says he can do top job

SINGAPORE (Reuters): Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he was prepared to take office as prime minister if he had the support of the electorate but was not about to launch a leadership challenge.

Lee, whose father Lee Kuan Yew was prime minister for 31 years until 1990, praised current Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and said they were working close together rather than jostling for position ahead of the next general election, due by 2002.

"If the MPs have confidence and the electorate supports it, I will give it a good try," Lee said when asked if he was capable of being prime minister in a recent interview with the Far Eastern Economic Review.

A transcript of the interview was made available by Lee's office on Friday.

"I don't see that we strengthen the team if I were to push to displace Mr Goh, and the team then ends up with one key player less. How does that make things better?" he said.

Lee also praised Goh's performance as prime minister. "He's doing very well, if you judge by how Singapore has done over these last nine years since he took over as prime minister," he said. "Nobody calls him a seat warmer any more."

Lee defended Singapore's approach to government critics, some of whom have been slapped with hefty lawsuits.

"We want politics to have a certain tone, a certain dignity, a certain integrity and uprightness," he said, adding that the U.S. legal system did not always allow public figures to clear their names of defamatory accusations.

"We want a system where... if you make a serious accusation about somebody -- whether about impropriety or immorality or corruption -- then either you stand and he falls or he stands and you have to pay damages," said Lee.

Singapore requires permits for publications as well as public speaking, has strict censorship laws, and rigorously enforces libel and slander statutes.