Malaysia-Singapore stress: Festered or faltered?

It is often forgotten there a bitter internal political confrontation between Malaysia and Singapore, occurred alongside konfrontasi between Indonesia and Malaysia in 1963-66 which eventually led to the break-up of the wider Malaysian Federation -- the formation of which gave rise to President Sukarno's konfrontasi policy in the first place. Memories of those distant days have revived, The Jakarta Post Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin reports, as the verbal sparks once again flew between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

HONG KONG (JP): As he withdrew his nomination as CIA director former Clinton Administration adviser, Anthony Lake, bemoaned the increasingly common Washington habit of reducing politics to a game of "gotcha".

Lake felt himself to be the victim of such a play. Under the unwritten rules of "gotcha", opponents are harried, discredited, demeaned, penalized and otherwise humiliated until they either retreat or retire from public service.

Singapore's former prime minister, now Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew has emulated this American practice by bringing about a major spat with his next door neighbor, and in reducing often brittle Malaysia-Singapore relations to their lowest point in years.

But since Lee has pursued a "gotcha" strategy towards political opponents for several decades now, it is probably more accurate to suggest that "gotcha" is one of Singapore's "Asian values" which the U.S. has been unwise enough to adopt.

This fundamental chain of cause and effect, of the "gotcha" strategy leading to the rancorous spat, has tended to be forgotten amidst the crisis brought on by Lee's statement. The statement, that the next-door Malaysian state of Johore was "notorious for shootings, muggings and car-jackings" has been repeated by his son, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, in legal affidavits.

This seemingly gratuitous comment, naturally seen as an insult across the causeway that links the new town of Woodlands in Singapore with Johore Bahru, let loose a barrage of angry responses from Malaysia, demonstrating conclusively that the emotions aroused between 1963 and 1965 when Singapore was briefly the fourteenth state of the Malaysian Federation, have not yet dissipated.

In both nations, there has been a great amount of economic development -- without the necessary political development to match it.

In 1964-1965, as he pushed too soon and too hard for an ostensibly racially equal "Malaysian Malaysia", Lee Kuan Yew seemed, to many Malay politicians, to be the epitome of the racially arrogant Chinese, and they reacted accordingly. Amidst heightened racial antagonism, Singapore was arbitrarily separated from Malaysia on Aug. 9, 1965.

But the real problem was not so much race, but the fact that two very different societies, unable to see life through the eyes of the other, simply failed to mesh.

In the years since, there have been times when Malaysia- Singapore relations threatened to become, to Southeast Asia, what Indo-Pakistan relations have often been in South Asia in the last 50 years: an internal political tension which did not end when it became, instead, an inter-state relationship.

At least Kuala Lumpur and Singapore talked more often and more productively with each other, under ASEAN's umbrella, than India and Pakistan have tended to do under SAARC's.

Only last year, when Lee referred to the possibility of a remerger between Malaysia and Singapore, provided Malaysia became a meritocracy, it seemed, to many Malays, that he was once again needling them on the special privileges which they feel they need to compete with the economic successes of the Malaysian Chinese.

That comment did not spark off a furor, but the Lee remark on Johore certainly has done. Interestingly, Lee's reaction demonstrated that, despite his much-vaunted statesmanship, he is as unlikely to learn from the past as the Malay political leadership is unlikely to forget it.

There was no political alternative for Lee except to go to Kuala Lumpur and personally express his regrets to either Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad or Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Lee should, by now, have known that the personal touch, properly handled, is most likely to turn away Malay wrath.

Instead, Lee preferred to apologize by way of two impersonal statements. The first did little good, especially as more than half of it implied that people should not have been able to read the affidavit in the first place. Mahathir himself derided the statement as an "excuse".

So, on March 17, Lee issued his "unreserved apology" and pledged that the offending phrase about Johore would be removed from the affidavit.

But that wasn't the end of the affair. Two days later the Malaysian Cabinet accepted the apology but noted that "the restoration of the old level of (Malaysia-Singapore) friendship would take time". The Singapore Foreign Minister S. Jayakumar expressed surprise at this statement, which didn't help to put the controversy to rest.

Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong failed to quell the Malaysian sense of outrage as he, like Jayakumar, implied that since Lee was not speaking on behalf of the government, the Malaysians should not take too much umbrage.

Goh has a penchant for football metaphors, and termed Lee's Johore comment as being "off-side". This was probably the most critical comment Goh has ever made of Lee, but it left the Malaysians wondering how they would be awarded the consequent penalty kick.

So they took one on their own on March 26, when the Malaysian cabinet was widely reported to have decided to freeze all relations with Singapore. This seemed to be a shock decision which really conjured up memories of August 9, 1965.

Renewed confrontation was in the air, born of the fact that different Malaysian Ministers were telling the less-closely- fettered Malaysian press different things. A day later, it was explained and qualified that this decision only applied to social, cultural and sporting ties and not to politics or trade. Subsequently,it was maintained that the cabinet had merely reaffirmed the earlier decision to accept Lee's apology.

The ensuing confusion remains, even now, to be fully clarified. Perhaps the shock administered by the "freeze" decision was what was intended all along. Clearly, some leading Malaysian politicians are still taking umbrage. Mahathir may well be among them, but he has some room for maneuver since he was away in Tokyo, denouncing white "European" domination of the world, and insisting on the need for East Asians to stand up to it, when the Cabinet's "freezing" decision was first reported, and then unmade.

For the Singaporeans, Lee was making a point in a legal case, not speaking on behalf of the government. For the Malaysians, the fact that Lee derided Johore in a non-governmental document does not alter the fact that he was presumably expressing a conviction, as well as making a disparaging remark. That will continue to rile them -- until Lee does what he should have done in the first place and takes a plane to Kuala Lumpur.

Since some Malaysian leaders believe that Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong made the same comment in his affidavit, and has not yet expressed his regret, it would be as well if Lee's son goes to KL with him. Analyses in the Singapore press suggests that perhaps Lee Hsien Loong's affidavit was not identical to his father's, without being categorical on the point.

Clearly the Singaporeans were and probably are still hoping, as they did in similar situations in the 1960s, that this is some momentary frenzy which will be forgotten as quickly as it arose. As in the 1960s, Singaporeans tended to read far more into the fracas far more meaning that was probably intended.

Thus an analyst in the Chinese-language Lianhe Zaobao suggested on March 29 that Singaporeans are already aware" that the aim of "some Malaysian political leaders" could be to "split Singapore's leadership, to undermine their efficiency and competence in governing the country, and to enable Malaysia to exert greater influence on Singapore for its own interests".

Equally clearly, the Malaysians are signaling feelings which have been festering for 30 years, and which, now that they are aroused, will take time to be put back to sleep. "It will take time to forgive and forget" as Education Minister Tun Najib Razak, son of the 1960s Deputy Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, put it.

Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who could have ended the furor over the freezing-of-relations decision immediately it arose, but chose not to do so, took the trouble to make the same point in greater detail: "The Cabinet feels, along with the Malaysian people, that good neighborly relations are built upon the principle of reciprocity, nurtured by mutual understanding and respect for one another. We therefore regret that some members of the Singapore government seem to lack in insight and earnestness, even appear to trivialize what is at issue... we seek to normalize relations with Singapore. However such relations are a partnership. It is the quality of the partnership that has been brought into question, naturally it will take time and effort to re-establish previous levels of confidence."

Mahathir subsequently endorsed Anwar's statement, and in a speech on April 1, while stressing the need for good neighborly relations, noted that if neighbors "criticize us and are rude to us, we will do likewise". A brief report in the Malaysian Chinese-language Sin Chew Jit Pao gave an interesting counterpoint to the Lianhe Zaobao analysis: it revealed that on a couple of occasions Mahathir had not been received with due courtesy by both Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong.

Whether the spat now fades or festers, it raises the more absorbing, but almost wholly ignored question as to why Malaysia- Singapore relations had again become abnormal, and why did Lee make comments in that affidavit in the first place?

This brings us back to "gotcha". Ever since he defeated and destroyed the Barisan Socialist opposition party in the late 1960s (the only real opposition Lee and his People's Action Party ever faced) Lee has gone to great lengths to see to it that a two-party system never develops in Singapore.

Tolerance of even the slightest degree of opposition is absent from the PAP version of Singapore values. From time to time, since the demise of the Barisan Socialists, a lone individual or two forgets the clear lessons of the past and pretends that Singapore is a democracy. If they then make the slightest error of fact, or utter personal criticism, or make some other "mistake" which in any other political system would be treated with tolerance and quickly forgotten, they get hammered unmercifully.

So it was on this occasion. A lone oppositionist Tang Liang Hong faces numerous defamation cases in Singapore courts, brought by Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Hsien Loong, Goh Chok Tong and others. Tang has taken refuge in Johore because he fears for his future in Singapore, where his assets have been or are being sequestered, and even his wife's passport has been confiscated.

Plunging on regardless, intent only on utterly destroying this insignificant would-be opponent, Lee Kuan Yew submitted his affidavit deriding the proposition that safety could be found in Johore, with no thought for the wider consequences, no thought for the lessons of the history of Malaysia-Singapore relations, no thought for the strategic fact that Johore supplies most of the water which Singapore needs to sustain its current level of development.

"Gotcha" exemplifies politics at its worst in Singapore, just as it does in the United States.