by Simon Lim
I have read in the news that Malaysian’s Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir has approached the Chinese Government to help Malaysia with its fiscal challenges. I consider his decision to swallow the humble pie a very profound and very telling. At the same time, it is bad omen for Singapore!
With the collapse of the Najib administration, we now know that the former Najib administration was rotten to the core and large amounts of money were stolen from their sovereign wealth funds. Malaysia is today shouldering debts of about a trillion ringgits, and perhaps even more.
Given the close relationships between our two countries – geographically, familial and a common history that go all the way back to more than half a century – it is a bad sign that, in her hours of need, Malaysia has turned away from a close and familiar neighbor in Singapore. Instead, she had approached China.
In my frank opinion, the ‘dishonorable son’ and the PAP government have squandered away invaluable goodwill and trust cultivated with the Malaysia Government by our old guard ministers over the past five decades.
And the case is not only with Malaysia. This useless Lee Hsien Loong government has also squandered away much valuable friendship and trust that the late Minister Mentor and his old guard colleagues painstakingly took many years to build up with the Chinese as well.
Instead of strengthening the foundations that our past government leaders built, I would venture as far to say that our foreign ministry and its minister have failed quite spectacularly with both Malaysia and the Chinese.
At least and it is so very unfortunate, but needlessly so, that Vivian Balakrishnan is doing a good job helping PM Lee write a beautiful “Singapore Sorry” story.
I urge everyone to not just read about news only but to think hard and analyse after reading the news. The writings are clearly on the wall.
