A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (121 page)

I have stated repeatedly in my writings and speeches that I am against war and have always believed that there are different and peaceful ways of solving political conflicts, even between nations. I stand by my words at the 10th OIC Summit and once again quote from my speech to indicate my intentions: “We must not antagonise everyone. We must win their hearts and minds. We must win them to our side, not by begging for help from them but by the honourable way that we struggle to help ourselves. We must not strengthen the enemy by pushing everyone into their camps through irresponsible and unIslamic acts. Remember the considerateness of the Prophet to the enemies of Islam. We must do the same. It is winning the struggle that is important, not angry retaliation, not revenge.”

I do not apologise for anything in my speech. I only apologise for the inevitable misunderstanding which may have hurt some people.

ENDNOTES

[
1
]
Mazhab
is an Arabic term that refers to an Islamic school of thought.
 

[
2
]
Tarikats
are Islamic religious orders devoted to a mystical search of divine truth.
 

[
3
] The Irgun Tsvai-Leumi was a militant Zionist group that carried out terrorist attacks in support of the Jewish state. The Irgun was later absorbed into the Israel Defense Forces.
 

[
4
] The Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organisation that later formed the basis of the Israel Defense Forces.
 

[
5
] In March 1948, Irgun forces attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin as part of a counter-offensive against the Arab Liberation Army’s attempts to cut off supplies to Jerusalem. Over 100 villagers were killed.
 

[
6
] The
Hijrah
refers to the migration of Muslims that the Prophet Muhammad led in 622 CE from Mecca to Medina, where Islam first began to flourish.
 

One area of Malaysian foreign policy that has always been challenging has been our relationship with Singapore. I may be wrong, but I suspect that Lee Kuan Yew once nursed the thought of becoming Prime Minister of this country. At that time, Singapore was too small a stage for his great talent. If Singapore and its overwhelmingly Chinese population were to become a permanent part of democratic Malaysia, he stood a good chance of winning majority support and being elected Prime Minister. Events have shown that the Malays can be deeply divided against themselves so that their being in the majority poses no problem towards their being ruled by others.

But the Tunku frustrated Lee and his hopes when he confined the activities of the People’s Action Party (PAP) to only Singapore, and virtually turned it into an Opposition party. In defiance, the PAP contested against MCA candidates in the 1964 General Election but it did poorly, winning only one seat. That put paid to Lee’s hopes of displacing the MCA as UMNO’s chief partner in the governing Alliance. The show of defiance convinced the Tunku that there could be no understanding with the PAP and he consequently expelled Singapore in 1965. Once Singapore became an independent country, the relationship between the two nations required considerable rethinking.

Enforced separation meant the end of Lee’s dream. He cried when announcing it on television and never forgave the Tunku. He also remained unforgiving of Syed Jaafar Hassan Albar for the Sino-Malay clashes in Singapore that made separation necessary,
[1]
 and of me who he labelled a Malay ultra. He did not attribute the expulsion to his own behaviour and obvious ambition, choosing instead to believe firmly that we were responsible for the Tunku’s action. When he made the decision to part ways, the Tunku must have finally realised that with Singapore included in Malaysia, the Chinese would become the overall majority, capable of winning sufficient seats to form the Government.
 

I had clashed with Lee many times when we were Members of Parliament in the 1964 and 1965 parliamentary sessions. I did not like his endless preaching about what Malaysia should do or should be like. Bitter over the painful separation, he called Malays “the jungle Arabs”, likening them to the desert Arabs of whom he seemed to have a low opinion. I doubt he would disparage the Arabs today as Singapore is now far more active than Malaysia in wooing investors from the Middle East, and being the model as well as their advisers for development.

Despite our past clashes, I was determined to have friendly relations with Singapore when I became Prime Minister. It should not have been difficult since many of our leaders had studied together in the same schools, colleges and universities. Yet, solving the serious problems we had with them over the years proved to be easier said than done.

The oldest of these problems had to do with water. In 1960 and 1961, before Singapore joined Malaysia, we signed an agreement whereby the Peninsula would supply 350 million gallons daily (mgd) of raw water at three sen per 1,000 gallons. Under the same agreement, Singapore would sell treated water to Johor, not exceeding 12 per cent of the raw water Singapore bought. The agreed price of the treated water was 50 sen per 1,000 gallons, although the cost of treating the water would probably have been in the region of RM1.20 per 1,000 gallons. This meant that the price Malaysia had to pay Singapore if it took the maximum 12 per cent would far exceed what Singapore would pay Malaysia for raw water. The amount paid for raw water daily by Singapore is RM10,500, while Malaysia pays RM21,000 a day for treated water. This means that Malaysia earns zero while Singapore gets RM10,500 per day after paying for raw water.

To add to this unreasonable equation, the prices could only be changed if both sides agreed to it. However, if Malaysia were to ask for an increase in the price of raw water, Singapore would surely respond by seeking a hike in the price of treated water. We were caught in a bind. The two agreements would expire in 2011 and 2061 respectively, but even before that, in 2001, Singapore wanted to negotiate a new water agreement for 100 years. They wanted their 350 mgd of raw water at the same rate, under the same conditions as before and they also wanted it to come from the Johor River, as they said it was cleaner.

The only way out was for Malaysia to cease buying treated water from Singapore before seeking an increase in the price of raw water. A sum of RM700 million was accordingly allocated to Johor to build and operate a water treatment plant to supply the needs of the state. The plant was completed after I stepped down. I expected the Malaysian Government to seek a review of the price of raw water to Singapore without being worried about an increase in the price of treated water. At 30 cents per mgd, Johor could earn as much as RM105,000 per day or RM38,325,000 per year. Meanwhile, Singapore was making huge profits from selling the Malaysian water it treated both to Singaporeans and to ships. Released from any obligation to sell treated water at a subsidised price to Johor, Singapore could sell more water and earn larger profits. For our part, we did not want to deprive Singaporeans of water but we felt that the island state should pay a fairer price for the raw water.

Under the new 100-year agreement that Singapore tried to negotiate, they wanted an additional 400 mgd of raw water. Malaysia was willing to provide it but only at the right price. However, since I stepped down there has been no progress in the water agreement with Singapore and we are still being paid three sen per 1,000 gallons. Ironically, Johor sells raw water to Malacca at 30 sen per 1,000 gallons. Why should Malaysia have to subsidise the Singapore Government? And it really is the Government that we are subsidising, not the people of Singapore who are paying SGD17 (well over RM40) for 1,000 gallons of treated water. Malaysia is paying heavily to remain on good terms with Singapore but friends who have to be bought are not real friends.

The next problem was our railway station at Tanjong Pagar, in the southern part of the island. The railway line runs through its centre and since there are no level crossings, Singapore road traffic is not affected. From colonial times, Malayan customs and immigration officers have operated from this station, that is, inside Singapore. This arrangement facilitates travel and has never been a problem. We would like to maintain the line and station and to improve the service using modern electric trains.

But Singapore wants the land back. It is valuable, and presumably they have some new use for it in mind. Our agreement from the time of separation is that we could stay where we were so long as we ran trains into Singapore. But we agreed to renegotiate should Singapore want to develop the land. In November 1990, Tun Daim Zainuddin, then the Finance Minister, and Lee signed a document known as the Points of Agreements (POA). The POA involved moving the Tanjong Pagar Station to Bukit Timah, a point halfway between the Tanjong Pagar Station and the Causeway. For giving up the southern portion of the line and Tanjong Pagar station, Singapore would compensate us with land of equal value at Shenton Way, near the city centre, for Malaysia to develop.

For reasons that are unclear, Tun Daim told me that Singapore subsequently claimed that the POA had been altered because a Malayan Railways official had said that the terminus for our railway would be at Johor Baru. How any statement by a railway official could alter an agreement between governments, I do not know. Normally proper amendments would be made in writing and endorsed by both governments. The status of the POA is now murky, with Singapore demanding that we move our Customs, Immigration and Quarantine facilities (CIQ) to Woodlands, which is near the Singapore end of the Causeway. Meanwhile, Singapore began to claim that the land to compensate Malaysia for Tanjong Pagar and the railway line was not to be developed by us alone, but jointly.

Repeated meetings between Malaysian and Singaporean officials have failed to resolve the impasse. What will happen to the railway link may now be caught up in a larger complication between Malaysia and Singapore involving the new bridge which I had proposed. The Malaysian Government under Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi cancelled the project.

Another thorn in our bilateral relations was Pulau Batu Puteh, a rocky outcrop known on some maps as Pedra Branca (“white rock” in Portuguese). During the colonial period, the British built lighthouses on a number of islands along the peninsular coast. It did not mean that the British owned those islands or that Malay sovereignty over them was ceded or divided in any way. On Pulau Batu Puteh, in the sea lane approaching Singapore from the east side of the Peninsula, the British set up a navigation facility in 1851 which they named the Horsburgh Light. Since the Colonial Government was based in Singapore, all these lighthouses were administered from the same office there. After the formation of the Malayan Union and Singapore’s separation from Malaysia, these coastal lighthouses continued to be administered from Singapore.

In our view, Pulau Batu Puteh had always belonged to Johor. We had allowed Singapore to continue operating the lighthouse after Independence as we did with the lighthouse on Pulau Pisang on the west side of the Peninsula, which also belongs to Johor. But Singapore claimed that Pulau Batu Puteh belonged to them. They built a small fortress on it and would not allow Malaysian fishermen, who had fished there for centuries and become accustomed to seeking shelter from storms on the island, to go near it. Once, when I approached the island on a Malaysian Police boat, Singapore immediately sent two of its navy boats to intercept us. Not wanting to create an incident, I asked the police boat skipper to leave the area.

Singapore finally agreed to refer the claim to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for adjudication. On 23 May 2008 the Court delivered its long-delayed and much-awaited decision. By majority vote, it awarded Pulau Batu Puteh to Singapore. It did so on several grounds: first, that Malaysia could not produce the original letter stating the conditions under which the Sultan of Johor had agreed to the building of the Horsburgh Light in 1851. The letter was not in Johor’s or the national archives, but may well be held in Singapore’s collection of records of the colonial authority that operated from there, and perhaps also in the British national archives. Second, that Singapore had been operating the lighthouse for long unbroken periods without objection by Malaysia. And third, that in 1953, i.e. before Independence, the Sultanate of Johor, in a letter signed by the State Secretary had disavowed any claim to the island.

That the letter assuring the British authorities in Singapore of Johor’s lack of desire to claim the island itself was signed by a temporary or acting State Secretary may well indicate that the desired consent was extracted conveniently during the time when the state was under British rule. But courts and lawyers, who understand their books of rules but are less attuned to how the world works and how the subtleties of Malay meaning are communicated, seem not to have appreciated this point. Despite giving Pulau Batu Puteh to Singapore, the Court declared that the adjacent Middle Rocks outcrop, which were further away from Malaysia, were Malaysian. It would seem that the island given to Singapore is lying in Malaysian waters.

The Court may have thought that by giving something to each of the disputing parties, it was being fair. This was the commonly expressed view in the days following the issuing of the Court’s judgment: Malaysia and Singapore would soon agree to have their technical experts meet to work out all the complicated questions of delineating boundaries, and the practical details of managing all activities in the area subject to the ICJ’s decision. The Malaysian Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim thought and said so. Like it or not, he said, under the terms of the Court’s judgment, all practical matters could now be amicably and cooperatively resolved.

It is nice to be so nice. But only those who trust others to be nice could have been surprised when Singapore unilaterally laid claim to all the territorial waters and the seabed resources of the entire surrounding area. This move pre-empted the work of the expert technical working groups which the Malaysian Foreign Minister was so looking forward to. It is hard to be a good, amicable and trusting neighbour to someone who is unable to concede that anyone else is entitled to anything. Losing this little island was unfortunate. The decision to go to the International Court of Justice was made while I was still Prime Minister, and we had opted for that route because we believed we had a stronger case than Singapore.