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.