Goh ready to mend rift with Philippines

Goh ready to mend rift with Philippines

SINGAPORE (AFP): Singapore's Premier Goh Chok Tong has said that he was prepared to restore relations with the Philippines following a bilateral fracas over the hanging of a Filipino maid here.

But Goh pointed out in a national day speech late Sunday that Singapore would not have come under persistent attacks from the Philippine media on the controversy if his country was as big as Indonesia or Malaysia.

"Singapore and the Philippines should work together in ASEAN to achieve common goals. We are ready to repair the damage to our bilateral relations if the Philippine government, people and the media are," Goh said.

Relations plunged to an all-time low after the March hanging of a Filipina maid, Flor Contemplacion, for the 1991 murder of a compatriot and a Singaporean boy, triggering outrage in the Philippines, where she was thought to be innocent.

The two countries recalled their ambassadors but Manila moved to normalize relations last month after an independent US panel upheld Singaporean authorities' findings in the murder case.

Goh, in his first public comment on the episode since the independent panel's findings, said the Philippine media had "worked the whole country into a frenzy by wild and irresponsible reporting."

He said President Fidel Ramos sent him several video cassettes and newspaper cuttings "to let me appreciate the mood, and his predicament."

Goh added: "The Filipinos and the Singaporeans are totally different people. We have different cultures and political systems. Some of their journalists are a special breed from the wild west of cowboy movies."

To illustrate his point that Singapore was ridiculed by the Philippines because it was a small nation, Goh recounted how Indonesia got the Philippines to keep out East Timorese from a Manila conference on East Timor last year.

The Philippines at first said that it could not interfere. Indonesia signaled its displeasure by suspending peace talks it was to host to resolve Moslem separatism in southern Philippines waged by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and threatening to hold a tit-for-tat conference on the MNLF in Indonesia, Goh said.

President Fidel Ramos subsequently banned foreigners from attending the conference, including the East Timorese dissident leaders.

Goh also said that vote-buying in Thailand and Taiwanese elections "showed how the Western media's model of democracy really works in an Asian country."

"Democracy evolves differently according to the different conditions of each society. In Singapore, we eschew money politics. But money politics is the accepted way in many other democracies," Goh said.