Ministry of Law and Home Affairs K Shanmugam told reporters on the sidelines of a Chinese New Year event that he and the country’s legal team had seen and will study the documents filed by Malaysia’s Government to review a 2008 judgement by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the award of Pedra Branca to Singapore.
He also noted that the team will respond accordingly.
The Minister said that after looking at the document, Malaysia will have to satisfy a number of conditions before the court, saying, “Among them are that there are new facts and that the new facts that have been found would have made a decisive difference and the precise legal scope would have to be clarified.”
Although he said that he spoke without the benefit of legal advice, the Minister said, “Looking at it from that perspective, I’m wondering what are the new facts in those documents and how they would have made any difference to the case or will make any difference.”
Malaysia’s Government uses three documents to challenge the Pedra Branca judgement, which are Internal correspondence of the Singapore colonial authorities in 1958, an incident report filed in 1958 by a British naval officer and an annotated map of naval operations from the 1960s.
It is said that Malaysia claims that these documents establish that “officials at the highest levels in the British colonial and Singaporean administration appreciated that Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh did not form part of Singapore’s sovereign territory” during the relevant period.
Later, he told Channel News Asia before his walkabout in Chong Pang on Sunday, that Singapore has the best legal team, which consists of Attorney-General Lucien Wong, Professor S. Jayakumar, Professor Tommy Koh and former Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong.
The Minister said, “Their knowledge in international law is unquestioned and also their knowledge in the facts of this case cannot be matched because they actually dealt with it for years – for five years – and took it to the tribunal. We are very happy that they’ve agreed to come back and deal with this issue which arises from the main dispute.”
“The knowledge, the understanding, the detailed assessment which they have is invaluable and we are very lucky that we have been able to put back the team,” he added.
He noted that the Pedra Branca veterans will be assisted by lawyers from the Attorney-General’s Chambers.
When asked if the application to the ICJ would affect bilateral ties, Mr Shanmugam stated that there will always be differences between countries and that issues would fester if left unresolved, saying “In our view, as a small country, the best way of resolving these differences is to have the dispute arbitrated, decided by a neutral international tribunal. Because if you look at the other ways of resolving disputes, they are not very attractive.”
He then added that the Republic must take it as a fact that there will be differences. Therefore, the Government must find the best way of resolving them.
Subscribe
Login
0 Comments
