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
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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."