Phone calls and photo posts: How PM Lee taps these 'foreign policy' tools to secure Singapore’s interests
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SINGAPORE: Former diplomat Ashok Kumar Mirpuri began his United States posting the same year Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong started his social media accounts.
On the PM’s visits to the US, Mr Mirpuri saw how Mr Lee used his “deep interest” in social media and photography to make his overseas work “real” to Singaporeans back home.
“Every time he’d come to the US, he would take interesting photographs which he would then put out on social media, whether we were in New York, Washington or San Francisco,” recalled Mr Mirpuri, Singapore’s ambassador to the US from 2012 to 2023.
“He wanted to convey to the Singapore audience the bigger world that he had to function in, but make it real for them as well,” Mr Mirpuri told CNA.
It’s not just hard foreign policy, it’s not just going into meetings, dealing with your counterpart … he connects all these things to Singaporeans.”
