SINGAPORE: A prominent Singapore minister stepped aside on Thursday as the successor to the premier, in a shock move that upended the tightly-controlled country’s carefully planned power transfer.

Finance minister Heng Swee Keat was in 2018 named to a key post in the ruling party that put him in pole position to take over when Singapore’s founding family hands over the premiership. He was expected to replace Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, son of the late founding premier Lee Kuan Yew, who oversaw the country’s rapid economic development during three decades of sometimes authoritarian rule.