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The biter bit in Malaysia-Singapore ties

The Singapore Prime Minister, Mr Goh Chok Tong, loses his temper, as he should not, at the Malaysian media's reporting of the island republic's reclamation work on its side of the Straits of Tebrau that separates Malaysia from Singapore. He says they raise issues which poisons bilateral ties. He mentions three of recent vintage: the price of water, the tudung, and now land reclamation. Mr Goh's stance suggests, like Malaysian leaders often, he, unusually, did not think this through before he talked. Both view the other's media, often in truth, as storm troopers against it, thoroughly unreliable and potentially hostile. So, why did Mr Goh blow off his handle, as Malaysian ministers often, without thinking through? Unless it was more than problems with Malaysia that weighs on his mind?

Bilateral irritations between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore are not new. So long as there exists a different worldview -- religion, race, cultures, politics -- and what happens in one redounds on the other, especially when the minority race in one is in the majority in the other, these irritations cannot disappear. Nor would it. But what upsets Mr Goh is when he focussed on Malay and Islamic issues, amidst President Bush's worldwide campaign against Islamic terror, to rein in the cultural Chinese community which do not ascribe to his PAP's governing Peranakan, those we call Babas in Malaysia, worldview, it backfired: three Singapore Malay girls, none older than seven, rebelled, and he lost ground, however minutely, in the arcane Singapore politics. He now looks for someone to blame, and finds the Malaysian media. He is now as frustrated of the Malaysian media as Malaysian ministers are of the Singaporean media. It does not matter who is right, especially when the media in both countries are quick to damage the other's worldview.

When Islam is targetted, every action against the Malay community is viewed as against both religion and race. Malay newspapers jump into action, as do Singaporean papers when Chinese issues are at stake in Malaysia. In other words, each looks upon its media to raise what it could not, as a government, raise. Malaysia is on the offensive now, as not so long ago, it was Singapore. When Singapore looks at Malaysia through what is written in the latter's newspapers, whatever justification it had for what it does, especially the land reclamation in the Straits of Tebrau, dissipates.

Singapore did not object when Malaysia decided to build the Waterfront City in the Straits of Johore, a project kicked off in the presence of the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed himself. It is probable she had begun preliminary work on the Straits of Tebrau reclamation work, and found no need to discuss this with Kuala Lumpur, not when Malaysia did not with Singapore over the Waterfront City.

The Waterfront City would have affected the Singapore side of the Straits, but it was defended on Malaysia's right to do as it liked on its side. Singapore insists now on the same principle along the waterway separating the two countries. As it happened, this brilliant idea came when its originator thought of it when he was caught in the traffic jam on the causeway. And it soon became, like so many ideas, fact. The company entrusted with building it is now Singapore-controlled, and the project abandoned. But the principle on the Waterfront City remains. And Singapore adopts it. The Johore Government did not object to the Waterfront City as it does now to the Straits of Tebrau reclamation work. The mentri besar of Johore who welcomed the Waterfront City is the same Dato' Abdul Ghani Othman who opposes Singapore's land reclamation work in the Straits of Tebrau.

As usual, in Kuala Lumpur, there is a rush to frame it in narrow, often irrelevant, political terms. So, Dato' Abdul Ghani's complaint is taken up by the federal government and a paper quickly made for presentation to the Cabinet, where it is to discuss it this week. Like Malaysia's infamous plan to build a bridge over what is now the causeway, and the underground tunnel for the Malaysian railway to continue to Singapore, this is not thought through. All are instant fixes for local problems, and involves the interested parties to make dollops of money, and done without reference to international law or the rights of neighbouring nations.

So, Malaysia makes statements that make it a laughing stock in Singapore. The Singapore newspapers published what it thought this new bridge across the causeway that Malaysia planned to build half the way before connecting it to the causeway from the Singapore end. It is this cut-and-paste approach to projects, which when it is in Malaysia is done come what may, but which causes it endless troubles when other nations are involved.

However one looks at it, the Singapore reclamation work is one Malaysia cannot quibble about. If, as Dato' Ghani claims, this would impinge on Malaysia's use of the deep-water stretch of the Straits, why did he not raise this issue with the Prime Minister before the Waterfront City was launched? No one thought of it then. All that mattered was yet another entry in the Guiness Book of Records. Because if he had, he would not have been as enthusiastic of the Waterfront City. The Pasir Gudang Port was built to divert traffic from Singapore ports. The KLIA was built to show Singapore it could do as well as Changi. Today, it is a white elephant, with fewer airlines using it than when it started, and resembles a ghost town even when it is at its busiest.

Singapore officials say when Malaysian plans are presented to them, it is often clear it had not been thought through. The Malaysian Railways, KTM, lost control of its land in Singapore because it did not look into the conditions of the land given it in Singapore; and technically lost it when it corporatised and given to Renong to run. The list multiplies. If Malaysia wants a redress, Wisma Putra, if it is up to it, should find substantial grounds in international law, to force Singapore to cease and desist. It cannot be resolved because one mentri besar is unhappy about it. In any case, this is yet another storm in a teacup Malaysian politicians are famous for.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my