1. Winahyo -- Equality before the rich and the powerful
1. Winahyo -- Equality before the rich and the powerful
1 x 22 48 pt Bodoni
Equality for rich and poor?
Winahyo Soekanto
Lawyer
Consumer Care Foundation (YPK)
Jakarta
2. Japan -- Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni an alarming signal
1 x 32 36pt Bodoni
Japan still arrogant about history
Xiao Feng
China Daily
Asia News Network
Beijing
3. Malay -- Malaysia's Berita Harian takes aim at Singapore
1 x 32 36pt Bodoni
Malaysia's media takes aim at Singapore
Brendan Pereira
The Straits Times
Asia News Network
Singapore
The grumbling goes on and on. Singapore is so hard to like. So
difficult to understand. So fixated with the black and white of
an agreement. So afraid of competition. So calculative as a
friend. So cocky. So much of an American vassal in an Asian
neighborhood.
When Datuk Ahmad Rejal Arbee starts on Singapore, he can be
unstoppable.
He carries with him much of the baggage of anger and suspicion
that flowed from the era of Separation. It is overflowing after
more than three decades.
But he is a busy man. So the interview must end. He edits
Malaysia's Berita Harian, the Malay-language daily that has tried
single-handedly to keep the anti-Singapore sentiment alive over
the past few months.
While other newspapers here reported the tudung issue with
some detachment, Berita Harian chose a more provocative stance --
using a photograph of a young turbaned Sikh boy and a Muslim girl
wearing a headscarf on its front page to drive home its editorial
position that Singapore was discriminating against Muslims.
Before that issue died down, the newspaper broke the story on
the land-reclamation project in the waters off Pulau Tekong.
Now, it has dug into the archives to resurrect a non-story
over Pulau Pisang and stir the pot once again.
The way Datuk Rejal sees it, it is payback time. "For a long
time, Singapore's press coverage on Malaysia has not been
flattering. The Malaysian press has been quite fair all along.
"But now, we are focusing on you and you are getting
uncomfortable," said the veteran journalist, who has headed
Bernama, the national news agency, Berita Publishing and The Sun,
an English-language tabloid.
Every story on Singapore his newspaper uses is calculated to
have a nuisance value.
Several people who have attended recent meetings with him say
that the quiet and polite man gets worked up when bilateral
problems with Singapore are discussed.
Singapore-bashing does not boost circulation, say senior
editors of other newspapers. Berita Harian sells about 197,000
copies a day and occupies second spot behind Utusan Malaysia in
sales and influence in the Malay community.
But the newspaper counts the southern state of Johor as one of
its strongest bases and knows that anti-Singapore feelings
resonate among UMNO politicians as well as the average Johorean,
who blames the higher cost of living on free-spending
Singaporeans.
Somewhere in the newspaper's scheme of news coverage is also
the national-service element.
He said: "We have always dealt with Singapore on the basis
that we are closer than just neighbors. Because of that, we have
not been so calculative in our dealings.
"But Singapore is different. Even when it offered help during
the currency crisis, it came with strings attached.
"So, maybe, this is where Malaysia has been wrong all along.
"We should not think that this relationship is so special --
that when we negotiate with Singapore on anything, it should not
be on a chinchai basis. We should go by the book." Chinchai means
"anything goes" in Hokkien.
His take on what constitutes a special relationship is one in
which compromise takes precedence over everything, including
agreements.
As skewed as his observations are, it is by no means a
minority view here. Many politicians, senior journalists and even
corporate leaders believe that there should not be a credit and
debit ledger in Malaysia-Singapore ties.
So when Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong offered a US$4-billion
(S$7.3-billion) loan-for-water arrangement to Malaysia, it was
perceived not as a hand in friendship but an extraction from a
weakened neighbor.
Says an UMNO Supreme Council member: "We did not need to take
the money. But we have not forgotten."
Since then, the effort to paint Singapore as a villain has
been continuous.
Malaysian politicians accused the Singapore government of
trying to hurt the Malaysian economy by not stopping financial
institutions in the Republic from offering higher interest rates
for ringgit deposits.
Despite repeated explanations by Singapore leaders on why it
would never want to hurt an economy so intertwined with its own,
nationalism has continued to have a more powerful attraction than
reason.
In such an environment, it is easy for those who flog
conspiracy theories to have an audience.
One making the rounds in Kuala Lumpur is that Singapore is
worried about the economic competition posed by Malaysia and has
started to sabotage its northern neighbor.
Referring to Taiwanese shipping line Evergreen's moving of its
operations to Johor's Port of Tanjung Pelepas, Datuk Rejal said:
"If we do things to improve ourselves, Singapore should not view
us as trying to compete. Lee Kuan Yew should not go to Taiwan to
persuade Evergreen not to come to Pelepas."
He did not offer any evidence to back his allegation about
Lee's supposed trip to Taiwan, but that didn't stop him from
continuing his attack.
He alleged that Singapore was trying to block large
multinationals from pouring money into a multi-billion-ringgit
petrochemical complex in Kertih, being developed by national
petroleum company Petronas.
"Why shouldn't Malaysia develop its petrochemical industry?"
he asked. "It is Singapore that does not have its own raw
materials. But we do."
This perception of economic sabotage is the real reason behind
all the noise over the land-reclamation project.
Remove the claims that the livelihood of fishermen was being
affected or environmental damage, and all that remains is this:
Malaysia believes that Singapore is trying to kill off the port
at Pasir Gudang.
There is no evidence to back this suspicion. And there need
not be. Why? Because opinion-makers in Malaysia are convinced
that Singapore's idea of dealing with competition is to kill it.
Datuk Rejal's reaction is typical. He said: "I feel Singapore
is not open and not forthcoming."
On the land-reclamation issue, he commented: "Singapore should
have informed Malaysia about the project. Or, at least, Singapore
should have given us the environmental-assessment studies."
This theme was taken up by his newspaper last Tuesday when it
carried a Page One lead report headlined, Singapore did not
conduct EIA study on reclamation project.
Like his assertions on bilateral matters, the report was thin
on facts. Quoting a source, Berita Harian alleged that no
environment-assessment report was conducted by Singapore before
it embarked on reclaiming land.
How did it come to this conclusion?
Simple. Because the Singapore government had not given a copy
of the report to the Malaysian government. Therefore, none
existed.
The newspaper did not carry a single line of a comprehensive
explanation of the reclamation project issued by the Singapore
government recently.
Datuk Rejal believes that the nature of bilateral ties has
reached a stage where "we may not have the same cordiality as
before".
Why? Singapore, he noted, seemed to be going its own way,
charting its future outside ASEAN and seeking free-trade
agreements with Japan, the United States and New Zealand.
A few days after the interview, his newspaper implied that
Singapore was a "fair-weather" friend -- ready to stick with the
regional grouping when times were good, but eager to jump ship
when economic prospects were uncertain.
In Kuala Lumpur, this perception is grounded in more
nationalistic terms. There is a feeling that the vacuum of
leadership in ASEAN following the fall of former Indonesian
president Soeharto has paved the way for Malaysia to play a more
central role in the organization.
But just as Malaysia was ready to fill that vacuum of
leadership, Singapore moved to reduce its dependence on ASEAN,
said a senior analyst with a Malaysian government-linked think
tank.
He noted: "There is a strong perception that Singapore is
diluting the importance of ASEAN. I don't think there is any
substance to this view. But people seem to believe anything
negative about Singapore."