My Blog

The Water Talks - if only they could!

The latest developments on the "Malaysian side of the story" reveals that they are a bunch of people who not only do not mean what they say, but that they are also incapable of understanding agreements. The sad part, is that the Malaysians are not able to debate on the facts of the case, but have to resort to lies and imagination.

What has "fairness" got to do with a price for water that was fixed many years ago, when the intent was not necessarily to make substantial amount of money from its sale? After all, the water did not cost Malaysia any effort to produce, and the cost of processing the water (including the water works facility) has been borne by Singapore all along.

Amazing!! After an 8-day media blitz of full-page advertisements here, the Malaysian government has decided to copy Singapore's initiative by also publishing a booklet on the water talks, but for sale at 3sen each. The puzzling question is why the Malaysians have decided to do all this only more than 3 months after Singapore came out with its booklet which put into print all the information that was in the public record related to this debate at that time.

As admitted by the Malaysian Foreign Minister, they are "tired of debating with Singapore", probably because they do not have any facts on their side to be able to do so. Anyway, all their publications so far, just puts into print the untruths and irrelevant information related to this dispute that the Malaysians have fabricated, and hope to fool mis-informed and simple minded members of the public. However, they do not seem to realise that their fuzzy arguments which are not based on the facts of the case, may work with their own population, but will not hold water with the more sophisticated Singaporeans that this mis-information is apparently aimed at.

Quoted from Mahathir's recent interview with AFP (3 months from his retirement), he has revealed that his greatest failure after 22 years in power, is that he is still unable to "get the Malays to understand the workings of a free market economy and what they must do about it". By extrapolation, I would think this comment also applies to administering, understanding and negotiating changes to existing international agreements and contracts.

What can be done to come to an agreement in these negotiation? The answer is in the response from the Singapore Foreign Ministry which the Malaysians seem to want to ignore, perhaps because they do not have the facts on their side :-

"But instead of following up, they have resorted, six months later, to this ad campaign. This is puzzling. The MITA booklet was published three months ago. It contains nothing that was not in the 25 January 2003 Parliamentary Statement.”

“We do not know what they hope to achieve. To make progress Malaysia must engage the substance of the facts. They need to go beyond old stories and repeating tired arguments.”

Water-Talks between Singapore and Malaysia

The recent Malaysian attempts to explain their side of the story regarding the ongoing water negotiations between the 2 countries is quite ridiculous. Instead of focussing on the facts of the case, they are trying to rely on emotion and on appeals to "fairness". Having to resort to using media advertisements instead of normal diplomatic channels means that they have run out of valid arguments and have to use hype and fuzzy untruths to back themselves up in this instance.

None of their foreign ministry or information websites contain anything of substance with regard to this matter. This is because they have no argument on their side, and are just trying to conjure up something from their imagination, in order not to lose face with their uninformed populace.

Wonder if you can find anything substantial at these URLs? Some of the links do not even work properly (as is expected for things in general in that country, including the government) :-

www.neac.gov.my
www.myglobal.gov.my
www.kln.gov.my
www.kempen.gov.my

Compare this with Singapore's side of the argument which from the start, laid out all the facts clearly as they are, with regard to the actual situation. The Malaysians have nothing to dispute these facts, and as far as I am aware acknowledge them to be correct.

www.mfa.gov.sg

I believe the Malaysian government has nothing on their side from the legal point of view, and are just grasping at straws so that they will not end up looking like fools. However, everything that they say will just make them look more and more stupid to those who are informed of the real situation. I think the crux of the matter is that those who were responsible for administering the water agreement do not understand legalities and probably are not capable of reading and understanding such things properly.

Also, the Malaysian government led by the madman Mahathir, are not able to keep to their word during the negotiation process; agreeing on one thing at first, and then changing their minds later. This is why the negotiations have stalled and although Singapore is still willing to continue the talks, the Malaysians are either not sincere, or do not have an idea what outcome they want the talks to achieve, and therefore they are not able to proceed or to come to a conclusion from the negotiations.

I think the only way that this agreement can be finally resolved, is for either Singapore to invade Malaysia and take over the country, so that we can show them how to properly run the country, or for Singapore to be self sufficient in water within the next 25 to 50 years by recyling, desalination and other high tech water management processes. When that happens, then the Malaysian government of the day will moan that Singapore is not being friendly by refusing to buy anymore water from them.

The Malaysian government is not capable of processing sufficient quantity of their own raw water in Johore state, and are actually making a good profit buying cheap processed water from Singapore and then re-selling it to their own people at a high price. They have purposely tried to avoid or conceal this fact in any of their arguments about Singapore being "unfair, arrogant, legalistic or unfriendly". Perhaps this is the real reason for the Malaysian government not wanting to change the existing water agreement with Singapore, since someone is probably getting rich as it is, and things would be changed for this person when the water price gets revised.

Singapore government's reply to Malaysia's ad media blitz on the water issue.
Response from Singapore MFA to Malaysia ads