Isn't it amazing how politics are played out? If everyone from
the political cast were to be nominated for oscars in the upcoming
academy awards, they'd be handing out statues by the buckets.
Yes i'm refering to the frequent and sometimes beligerent attacks
on S'pore by our neighbours. "Stay out of our affairs" and "mind ur
own business s'pore" are just some of the phrases tat come to mind
when i recall past incidents that have been well documented in the
papers.
The truth is, recent remarks made by SM Lee about the presence of
terrorist ringleaders(We all know who's he's refering to) in
indonesia have hampened efforts to tighten security measures
locally, resulted in a withering attack from indonesian lawmakers,
citing the backlash his comments would have on the country's
economy and wat right has he to finger indonesia etc etc. Yet some
of their own local policy makers have agreed that their govt have
not done enuff to combat the terrorist plague, the lack of an
internal security act notwithstanding.
Strangely enough, it wasn't so long ago that BJ habibie wrongly
condemed s'pore's SAF for alienating muslims and capping their
promotion limits in the SAF and their restrictons from certain
vocations.
Recently, Malaysia has raised concerns that our land reclaimation
projects are encroaching onto their territory when it's plainly
clear that we are well within our lands.
When their claims were refuted, they then came up with unusual
claims that the land reclamation is killing the fish and causing
reprecussions for their fishermen.
How odd this may seem, seeing that malaysia saw it in their
infinite wisdom not to inform us of the drastic changes they intend
to make to their half of the causeway. "It's our portion of the
causeway, we can do wat we want with it." was the cryptic response
from their officials. In short, they felt no explanation for their
actions was necessary.
Then they started to rattle off on the "fact" that they were
bearing most of the construction costs of the bridge and how we
were overcharging them for treated water (however did that come
into the picture?). As before, our govt calmly and patiently
refuted every point the malaysian officials threw at us without so
much as a fuss.
Time and again, we have been singled out and taken to task for so
many issues. The tudung case while admittedly concerning muslims,
does not expand to include UMNO's interest in revamping our school
regulation system. This ruiling has been ard for years, why the
sudden interest only now? UMNO could have disputed this ruiling
when it was first established. After all it's pretty clear UMNO
takes a detailed interest in all matters concerning the muslim
community worldwide.
The underlying truth abt our land reclamation projects probably lie
in the new port setup Klang Maritime Authorities have established.
Indeed, two major clients of PSA, Maersk Sealand and a Taiwan
shipping giant have already been lured over, citing high production
and shipping costs cut-backs.
For the moment at least, this tiny red dot can manage the arrows
shot at it from bigger players.
