Let's all bash Singapore

THE ECONOMIST
February 10, 2007


SINGAPORE won South-east Asia's football championship on Feb 4 in a final against Thailand that was mostly peaceful, despite a bad-tempered first leg in which the Thais stomped off the pitch and sulked for 15 minutes.

The players were doing no more than imitate their military-run government, which has been in a strop with Singapore since Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister met Mr Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed Thai leader, last month.

In protest, top-level meetings with Singaporean officials were cancelled. General Sonthi Boonyarataglin, the Thai junta's leader, accused Singapore of spying on Thailand, using the telecoms business it bought last year from Mr Thaksin's family. He told his soldiers to stop using their mobiles and go back to walkie-talkies.

Despite 40 years of expressing fraternal warmth at Asean meetings, the region's leaders never miss an opportunity to pick a fight with Singapore.

In recent years, Singaporean firms, many of them state-backed, have bought businesses across the region, giving cause for paranoia. Indonesian parliamentarians claimed this month that their military secrets were also at risk because Singaporeans had bought into a local satellite firm.

Even sand is a matter of national security.

On Feb 6, an Indonesian ban on sand exports came into force, following a similar move by Malaysia some years ago. Singapore buys the sand to reclaim land from the sea and increase its puny terrain. Indonesia's official reason for the ban was to stop the environmental damage caused by sand mining. But a senior navy man let slip that it was motivated by various diplomatic spats with Singapore. The Indonesian navy has now sent no fewer than eight warships to its maritime border with Singapore to intercept suspected sand-smugglers. At the same time, the Indonesian sand-shovellers' association, facing unemployment, is threatening to sue the government over the ban.

The Malaysians, always up for a row with their estranged ex-spouse (Singapore and Malaysia were in a brief, unhappy union in the 1960s), are blaming their recent floods on Singapore's land reclamation. Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's disgruntled former prime minister, has sought to undermine his successor, Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi, by accusing him of secretly negotiating with the Singaporeans to lift the sand ban.

Tun Dr Mahathir also added his voice to the Thai junta's attacks on the Singaporeans. 'You'll get nowhere with them either being nice or being tough, they only think of themselves,' he said on Thai television.

There is always a plausible-sounding reason for the fights that Singapore's neighbours pick with it. The Singaporeans' kiasu (win at all costs) negotiating style does them few favours in a region where saving face is important. But it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the little country's unforgivable offence is being richer and more successful than its neighbours, and not particularly apologetic about it.