A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (122 page)

There was also the problem of Singapore’s use of Malaysian airspace. We had allowed Singapore Air Force planes to use our airspace above southern Johor for training. But when they sent a helicopter north of the designated area to rescue a pilot who had crashed there without informing us first, we withdrew our permission. After that, whenever we tried to resolve problems with Singapore, they demanded that we concede our airspace to them first before they would agree to anything. Malaysia has never sought to train its air force over Singapore as surely such arrangements should be reciprocal. But during my time, I did not ask for it as I preferred that training be done in our respective airspace.

At one stage, we had agreed that all our unresolved issues be settled together as a package. But because Singapore would never agree to a revision of the price of water, all other issues could not be resolved, making a package solution impossible. I wrote to the then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong that since that approach would not result in a settlement, we should revert to dealing with each issue separately. He agreed, saying he would instruct his officers to deal with the water problem first.

A fourth bilateral issue had to do with Malaysians who worked in Singapore and had to contribute to its Central Provident Fund (CPF). Singapore had refused to allow Malaysians living in the Peninsula to withdraw their CPF money when they stopped working in the island state. Strangely, they did not put the same restrictions on Malaysians from Sabah and Sarawak. To me this was ridiculous. Sabah and Sarawak are both part of Malaysia, but Singapore seemed to regard us as separate states. I have related elsewhere the setting up by Singapore of an effective stock exchange to trade in Malaysian shares after the separation of the Singapore Stock Exchange from the Malaysian market. The Central Limit Order Book, as the Singaporean entity was called, was implicated in the attack against Malaysian shares during the currency crisis. We had to force it to close.

Very early on the Singapore Government did not like their people to fill up their petrol tanks in Johor Baru where the price of petrol was cheaper. Singapore had limited the number of cars registered on the island to encourage the use of the government-owned subway and other public transport. The sale of petrol was not a big business in Singapore and the taxes collected by the Government would have been quite small. Yet Singapore insisted that their cars crossing to Johor Baru must have at least half-full tanks. It was very petty, but it reflects on the mentality of the people who ruled Singapore.

The British had developed Singapore as the premier entrepot port in Southeast Asia. To meet the needs of the Malay states, the British built Port Swettenham in Selangor, now renamed Port Klang. To ensure that it would never grow to compete with Singapore, the charges for transporting goods by rail from the Malaysian hinterland to Port Swettenham were deliberately made higher than to Singapore. When Malaysia became independent we started to develop Port Klang, dredging the channel for the big ships and building new wharves for North Port and West Port.

We marketed Port Klang aggressively but failed to attract ocean liners to use it. A private company then decided to build the Port of Tanjung Pelepas next to Singapore. I asked the private developers to invite Singapore to participate in the Port of Tanjung Pelepas venture, but Singapore declined, probably believing that Tanjung Pelepas would never be able to compete with them. By 2002 however, the managers of Tanjung Pelepas were able to win two key clients from the Port Authority of Singapore: Evergreen Marine from Taiwan and Maersk Sealand, the world’s leading container shipping firm.

Today ports in the Peninsula handle more than 10 million containers annually. Feeling the competition, Singapore started lowering their port charges and lending money to shipping lines. Malaysian port charges are lower simply because the cost of living in Malaysia is lower. Before the ports were built, the Malaysian Government imposed a levy of RM100 per truck going to Singapore to use their port. That levy I believe is no longer being charged. But whereas Tanjong Pelepas, Singapore’s principal competitor, is privately owned, Singapore ports are Government-owned. The competition is hardly fair as the Singapore Government effectively subsidises its ports. Singapore cannot seem to accept that it is no longer the sole strategic location in Southeast Asia. Because of the huge trade generated by the countries of the region, it pays for shipments to be made directly from the countries concerned without having to be collected at entrepot ports, such as Singapore.

It made sense for Malaysia to export and import products via its own ports. Malaysia cannot languish forever as Singapore’s hinterland. Port operations made Singapore a great trading centre and were a source of wealth for the country. Instead of seeing its wealth creamed off by Singapore, Malaysia is entitled to regain some of that wealth by building and operating its own ports for goods originating from and destined for the country. Yet Singapore seems to resent Malaysia’s competition.

To encourage the two growing ports at the southern tip of the Peninsula, namely Pasir Gudang and Tanjong Pelepas, it was essential in my view to remove the obstructions placed by the Johor Causeway upon the movement of goods by sea between the two ports. Instead of a causeway, there should be a bridge sufficiently high for barges with containers to pass below. Besides, the traffic to and from the existing Causeway was causing terrible traffic jams in Johor Baru. That jam would only get worse as more cars are put on the road. So I proposed to the Singapore Government that we replace the Causeway with a bridge. Characteristically, Singapore did not say yes or no. Like the other problems with Singapore, this too would be allowed to remain on the agenda without any decision being taken. An agenda is literally a list of “things that must be done”; but with Singapore, a common agenda is often an itemisation of things that must be forever deferred, in this case at Malaysia’s cost. I felt sure the bridge would never be built if we were to wait for Singapore to agree.

I spoke to Lee and urged him to persuade Goh. Lee wrote to say that Goh was nostalgic about the Causeway and that it could be removed only after he retired. Nostalgia can be an expensive sentiment. But it was not one that had stopped the massive redevelopment of downtown Singapore that Lee and Goh’s Government’s favoured. I raised the matter with Goh but could elicit no positive response. Yet the bridge was never part of the package when we tried to bundle together all our outstanding problems and resolve them simultaneously. In proceeding with the proposal for a new bridge, we did not need to be held up by those other problems. In any case, I had already told Goh that the package solution was proving unworkable. It was just another device for stalling, not carrying out, an agenda. If Singapore would not cooperate on the bridge, I had to find some other solution.

After discussions with interested parties in Malaysia, we decided that if Singapore refused to build the bridge together with us, then we would build a bridge on our side of the Tebrau Strait.
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 The deepwater line which formed the boundary between our two countries was almost exactly at the midpoint of the Causeway. By ending the southern end of our new bridge well on our side of the international boundary and the Causeway’s midpoint, we need not involve Singapore at all in the planning or construction of our bridge. Whether we wanted our own bridge to be flat and level, or curved with a high arch, was strictly our business.
 

A straight bridge on the Malaysian side only would be too short to be high enough for boats to pass below it. Its gradient had to be gentle enough for heavily-laden trucks to climb. So I suggested a curved bridge, one that would be long enough for the gradient to suit heavy motor vehicles but whose length, and gradual ascent and descent, would permit barge and boat traffic and other small ships to pass readily below the highpoint of its arch. An engineering study proved the concept entirely feasible. The bridge would have been about 1.5km long and would have carried an eight-lane highway about 25 metres above the straits. The train would not be able to climb a gradient that was suitable for motor traffic. The railway line had to be as near horizontal as possible. So we decided that a railway bridge should be built separately from the vehicular bridge. To allow ships to pass through, a part of the line would be able to swing open. Of course this section of the railway bridge would also be built on the Malaysian side of the straits and would join the old line on the Malaysian part of the Causeway.

There were other reasons for building the bridge. The water in the straits was stagnant and polluted. The bridge would allow the water to flow with the rise and fall of the tide. Yachts and other small boats would find the opening up of the straits very convenient. There would be a lot of commercial activity, especially the movement of tourists by boat between the eastern and western parts of both Johor and Singapore. I wrote to Goh to inform him that if he would not agree to the removal of the Singapore half of the Causeway, we would simply remove most of our half and replace it with a bridge that would land on our part of the Causeway. Traffic would then continue on to the Singapore part of the Causeway. Goh replied that he personally preferred a straight bridge; but if Malaysia wished to build its bridge on the Malaysian side, then he would accept it. Singapore did not indicate that it objected to the Malaysian curved bridge proposal, nor did Goh make any demands or impose any conditions. These were all made clear in the exchange of letters between us, which have been published by the Singapore Government.

With the bridge connected to an elevated highway, the obstruction to traffic flow in Johor Baru would be removed. Meanwhile the new CIQ was planned to be sited far enough inland for the road to have a sufficiently gentle gradient for trucks and buses. The contractor was directed to start work on the CIQ, the bridge and the railway bridge before I stepped down.

The Singapore Government was requested to relocate their water pipes which were in the way of the CIQ and the road. This they did, as required by the Singapore water-supply agreement. The water pipes on the Malaysian side might be buried in the seabed yet remain connected to the existing pipes on the Singapore side. The Singapore Government knew this. It had made no objection when Goh agreed in his letter to me to accept Malaysia’s plan to build a bridge on its side. So when the construction of the CIQ building and railway station required relocation of Singapore’s water pipes, Singapore did just that without any protest. The later claim that the Singapore Government had not foreseen the need to relocate the existing water pipes on the Causeway is not plausible. Certainly Goh did not make any reference to the pipes when he indicated in his letter that he accepted Malaysia’s plan. The environmental impact study completed by the contractor had shown that there was no reason the bridge should not be built where we planned it to be. The Singapore Government made no special requests regarding the environmental impact. In the meantime, work had started on the CIQ, the elevated road and on the shifting of the railway station to the new site adjacent to the CIQ. The pipeline carrying water to Singapore that stood in the way of the CIQ had also been shifted.

The whole project was well under way and Singapore voiced no objection. They could not object as the bridge was to be entirely in Malaysian territory. Its southern end would land on a part of the Causeway that was also on the Malaysian side of the deepwater boundary. Singapore did not need to make any modification to its part of the existing Causeway. The railway line to be retained on the Malaysian part of the Causeway would not affect the alignment on the Singapore side at all. Only the Malaysian part, north of the international boundary with Singapore, would be connected to the new railway bridge. Everything, it appeared, would be carried out as planned.

Then in 2004, Prime Minister Tun Abdullah suddenly announced that work on the bridge would be stopped and new negotiations would be held with Singapore so as to build a straight bridge. Tun Abdullah’s Government apparently did not like a crooked bridge. There may be other reasons which I do not know about. The new bridge was actually to be curved, not crooked, and this was hardly unusual. In the US, a famous bridge over a narrow straits between the mainland and an island is curved because the authorities wanted sufficient height for helicopters to fly under it. The highlight of the great new Trans-European highway is also a long curved bridge in France. Our new bridge, which had to be much longer than a straight bridge, would curve gradually and gracefully and would become an attraction for visitors. The bridge was designed to be both practical and picturesque. Who could sensibly object to that?

Our planned curved bridge would appear especially delightful at night, when it would be lit up. It would provide a clearance height of 25 metres, exactly the same as that of the Second Link at Tuas
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 which we had already built. It would serve its purpose just as well as a straight bridge so there was no reason to reverse the decision simply because of some sudden desire or belated liking for a straight bridge. Yet it was the Malaysian Government which made the decision to stop the construction and to renegotiate with Singapore. One year passed without results, then two, then more months passed. There had still been no indication that Singapore would agree to a straight bridge. So Malaysia continued to wait hopefully. But I know Singapore. I negotiated with them for more than 20 years but none of the outstanding issues between us were resolved. Singapore always delays, withholds agreement, and demands outrageous concessions in exchange for consenting to what is rightfully ours.
 

Then I heard that the Malaysian negotiators were offering to supply one billion cubic metres of sand to Singapore and to agree to Singapore Air Force planes to fly over southern Johor. I wondered whether it was the prospect of selling sand which made the Malaysian Government stop the bridge construction and to renegotiate the construction of a straight bridge. Meanwhile the Johor state government, which was directly involved in the whole project, objected strongly to this retreat by the Federal Government. Loud protests were voiced against the new proposal. Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, however, said that Malaysia would build the bridge on our side regardless of Singapore’s stand. The Foreign Minister Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar said Singapore had no right to object to the bridge that was being built in Malaysian territory. I thought we were about to go back to building the curved bridge to which the Singapore Prime Minister had already agreed. By then we had wasted two years, during which work on the CIQ had continued. Even if we had restarted building the curved bridge it would not have been completed by the time the CIQ was ready. We would be saddled with a white elephant which would have cost us almost RM1 billion to build.