This is the most important message to our politicians -
understand your adversary.
In foreign relation, often history has shown that both sides wanted
and dominate the other and at the end none is the winner and both
are the losers.
Singapore leaders as shown by their own policies towards their own
people for the past 41 years always maintain the top-down
domineering Kiasu stance toward the people.
They are high on tasks and presentation but very low on
understanding the needs and aspirations of others in dealing with
people or other countries.
Legalistic abilities pr IQ is not enough in overcoming problems
with others especially in dealing with equals or higher
personage.
The Malaysians on the other hand may be difficult to handle because
of the Malay dominance, and precisely because of this we have to
understand the need to handle them with care and
consideration.
The Malays are a proud and sensitive race as well made more so by
religion. If they turn inward, and refuse to deal with anyone and
become claustrophobic, they would become more problematic.
To work with the Malaysians' Malay, Singapore has to come up with a
package which will respect their feeling and sovereignty and yet
will by based on multi-racial and multi-religious co-existence as
the fundamental principle which will take a little time for them to
assess and respect.
Singapore Malays have been accommodated to the extent that they are
economically more independent now and are likely to offer the
Malaysian Malays the comforting feeling they eventually could
aspire to be like them if both sides cooperate.
From such people-to-people cooperation, more trust can be created
and the politicians will eventually have to give up their past
distrust on both sides and learn to flow with the people's
tide.
Why can't our leaders chart such a people-to-people cooperative
strategy in making them understand our approaches towards the
Malays in Singapore and win them over to our policies.
The above can be implemented through various people-to-people
cooperative projects like being done with Indoneia after the
Tsunami.
Do not play up to the press or get entangled in so many emotional
issues with them. Just work on the positive and concrete tangible
advantages that Singapore has achieved - the Singapore Malays have
got better than the Malaysian Malays without any special Bumiputra
privileges and in the long run this might be the course for the
Malaysian Malays as well as they will not forever depend on such
policy to maintain their position resulting in racial strife and
brain drains of the talented foreign and Chinese population.
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