Eventually, Lee’s combative character began to strike an increasingly discordant note among a growing number of Singaporeans. Sensing the shifting mood, he slowly withdrew from day-to-day governance; in 1990 he stepped down as Prime Minister. But he kept running for Parliament, and his pugnacious manner of campaigning was often grating. Days before the 2011 general elections, for instance, Lee warned the voters of a suburban constituency that they would “live and repent” if the PAP were defeated. Comments like these, later wrote Citigroup economist Kit Wei Zheng, “were widely perceived to have inadvertently contributed to the decline in the PAP’s performance.” That performance was hardly a rout—the PAP retained 60% of the popular vote and 81 out of 87 seats in Parliament—yet, a week after the polls, Lee left the Cabinet. Echoing the belief that Singapore had outgrown Lee’s forceful top-down, paternalistic approach, Lee Hsien Loong, who became Prime Minister in 2004, acknowledged that many voters “wish for the government to adopt a different style.”