The beginning of a new era

INSIGHT: DOWN SOUTH
By SEAH CHIANG NEE
Saturday July 23, 2011


It was part of a multi-million dollar deal when Malaysia and Singapore signed an agreement to return the 79 year-old train station at Tanjong Pagar and large tract of railway land to the republic. But the impact of this has provided a breakthrough in other projects.


WHEN Singapore and Malaysia broke up in acrimony in 1965, their present prime ministers were teenagers who had just started secondary school.


Malaysia’s Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak was 14, while Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore was a year younger.


Both were eldest sons of political leaders in their respective countries and attended top local schools before going abroad for further studies.


Like other teenagers, they were probably more preoccupied with sports and exams than with the fiery politics of the times.


They could not possibly have known that they would grow up to work together one day to remove the historical boulder that marred relationship during the past 46 years.


In 1965, Malaysia’s population was only 9.3 million or about a third its present size, while Singa-pore (now 5.08 million) had only 1.89 million people.


That means at least one in three Singaporeans and Malaysians today were either not born yet or were too young to have any living memory of that chaotic past.


Behind the urgency is the compelling force of business and global competition.


With expanding giants like China and India and world trade becoming more complex, smaller countries are finding it harder to compete without merging interests.


Long realising this, the two prime ministers began a series of negotiations in recent years towards im-proving cooperation. Last month they succeeded where their predecessors had failed.


They signed an agreement to re-turn the 79-year-old train station at Tanjong Pagar and large tract of railway land to Singapore as part of a multi-billion dollar deal.


I will not regurgitate the details which have already been reported.


The tangible impact of their give-and-take attitude has provided a breakthrough in the following projects:


> Mass transport: A high-speed rail link between northern Singa­pore and Malaysia’s Johor Baru by 2018;


> Crossing point: Broadening the present congested causeway or possibly building a new bridge to link eastern Singapore to Johor;


> Business: A joint company (Malaysia owning 60%) to develop six plots of premier Singapore land worth S$11bil (RM27bil) as well as build an iconic project, probably a 200ha township, in Iskandar;


> Iskandar Malaysia: By 2025 with ease of transport and hopefully improved security, the huge metropolis of Iskandar – three times the size of Singapore – will be ready as a source of fun and services for our people just a hop away; and


> Closer residency: Driven by high costs at home, Singaporeans are seeking healthcare or buying residential properties in Johor.


A well-run Iskandar will likely be viewed as a tourism rival in some Asian cities that are seeking to lure high-spending Singaporeans and other visitors from the region.


As a journalist who has covered Singapore-Malaysia ties for the past 40 years, I detect a resultant sanguine mood, heralding in a new era. Even the old football rivalry is being revived.


As I watched emotions unfolding among ordinary people, especially older folk over the end of the Malayan railway era on this island, I recall some of my early writings on bilateral relations.


I had once wondered why – in the face of manufacturing challenges from China and India – our two nations are still competing to attract the same multinationals.


They are spending billions duplicating infrastructure and services rather than jointly cooperating to make us more competitive.


In 1989, Singapore proposed a Growth Triangle to merge resources among Singapore-Johor-Batam to meet China’s economic might, but received lukewarm response.


The concept was based on successful trade-investment zone in Guangdong-Shenzhen which had an abundance of cheap manpower and land, while Hong Kong provided finance and business acumen.


Why did the zone formula fail to take off when it had worked so well in South China, I wondered?


After all, the two groupings shared more or less similar conditions and objectives, which were to hitch on to each other’s strengths, while covering their weakness for the common good.


Was it mistrust or racial dissimilarity – or both? The timing may have been premature. Although called a Triangle, Singapore and Johor were the predominant parties.


Other bilateral problems remain but the successful pacts had given them confidence that there is enough goodwill to resolve them, too.


All this is a boost for those who have faith that South-East Asia’s Growth Triangle can one day work well – despite political and racial differences.


“The loss of history is sad but it has to be so,” said an elderly blogger.


“Only then, can Singapore and Malaysia finally put the merger ghost to rest.”