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Will Bilahari Kausikan still lead team to KTM talks in KL on 22 Dec?

SNAblog

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http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/12/14/nation/7617664&sec=nation

Tuesday December 14, 2010
Singapore’s disdain exposed

By Mergawati Zulfakar

‘Stupid’, ‘losers’ and ‘corrupt’ are some of the damning assessments by Singapore diplomats of their close Asian neighbours. For many Malaysians, it comes as no surprise that is how Singapore sees the rest of the region.

SINGAPORE’S most senior Foreign Ministry official Bilahari Kausikan is heading for Kuala Lumpur on Dec 22 as a leader of a delegation to discuss KTM Berhad’s land swap deal in Singapore agreed in May by the Prime Ministers of the two countries.

This is the fifth round and possibly the last meeting of the Malaysia-Singapore Joint Imple_mentation Team (MSJIT) between officials of both countries, each side with about 20 people representing various ministries and agencies.

After the last meeting two weeks ago, a short one-paragraph joint statement was issued describing the meeting as one held in a cordial atmosphere.

Come Dec 22, the atmosphere will definitely be awkward, at least to some officials.

Simple analogy – imagine sitting with someone that you know who has been bad-mouthing you to others. How would you feel?

Now, how about sitting down to a meeting with the very man who claimed, among others, that Malaysia was “confused and dangerous, fuelled by the distinct possibility of racial conflict”?

Not only that, Kausikan said back in September 2008 that “a lack of competent leadership is a real problem for Malaysia”.


Courtesy of WikiLeaks and not exactly denied by his boss, Foreign Minister George Yeo, Kausikan’s remarks are riling up officials in Putrajaya.

“His remarks are crude and smack of arrogance. It is not just what he has said but how he said it. It shows his sentiment for us.

“Every time there is an MSJIT meeting, the host country will host lunch and dinner. It is going to be an awkward situation for us, said one government official.

Kausikan’s predecessor Peter Ho has also made damaging remarks on Malaysia, along with the ministry’s ambassador-at-large Tommy Koh whose views of Japan and India were damaging.

“Fat losers, stupid, bad leadership” are some adjectives that had been used by Singaporean diplomats to describe their neighbours.

Yeo, in an immediate attempt to play down reports, defended his officials, saying their comments were taken out of context and were interpretations of views reflected by American officials.

The comments, which Yeo described as “cocktail talk”, were confidential and should not have been released.

Yeo said his ministry would not check the veracity of the remarks, nor comment on what could have gone on in an informal and confidential setting.

It is normal for diplomats to get information from others during cocktails. What is surprising, though, is that the information gathered from the Singaporeans merit attention from the Americans.

“I am sure how it was said by the Singapore diplomats and the sentiment that it merits attention,” said an official.

For those who have dealt with Singapore, nothing has changed.

The general feeling among officials is that their Singapore counterparts do have condescending traits.


WikiLeaks exposés in the past weeks have caused embarrassment to diplomats and government officials around the world.

This week, it is Singapore’s turn. There are thousands of documents yet to be made public by WikiLeaks and who knows if Malaysia would be next, as we are never short of politicians who may not be able to keep their mouths shut.

As Yeo said, he did not think relations with the countries will be affected.

True, but as the closest neighbour with supposedly warm ties, Singapore would do well to show some kind of regret over the remarks made by its officials.

If it had been Singapore at the end of the stick, they would not stop until they get what they want. No doubt, Malaysia will now need to be more alert when dealing with Singapore.

During next week’s meeting, officials will need to remain professional when they meet Kausikan.

They have to stick to the agenda as there are objectives to be met since the leaders have given officials until end of the year to iron out details of the KTM land swap deal and other related projects.

The days of being emotional are long gone. It is time to think strategically for the long term and best interest of Malaysia.
 

Spock

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I am sure Malaysia says lots of nasty things about SG and other countries as well. If they are rational and smart enough, they should just keep quiet and thank their lucky stars that they have not been exposed in this way yet.
 

syed putra

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The KTMB land deal is a stupid deal for Malaysia.
KTMB land splits singapore in to halves, just as the causeway splits johore straits in two.
But singapore is able to get back the KTMB land without paying a cent, while malaysia may have to build a costly crooked bridge to unite the two halves of the straits.
 

jacobsgoh

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Bilahari Kausikan need not fear when he leads team to KTM talks, the team will be there under Sg flag, should anything unnatural happens to any of the team, Malaysia has to answer to Sg's powerful army; and the GIs will come and give a helping hand.
 
Last edited:

Dreamer1

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Bilahari Kausikan: A glance at the way he thinks
December 18th, 2010 | Author: Contributions

Mr Bilahari Kausikan

I was trying to find out more about this person and though many of you would say that his perspective doesn’t differ much from the rest of the residents of the Ivory Tower, I feel that this email, whether or not it had been edited for political correctness, helped me understand who he is a bit more.

The following email is a response from Mr. Kausikan to this blog’s post dated May 10, 2006. It is rather shocking to myself that a politician would speak with such vocabulary and that, to me, the concern that politician like himself made comments that sound like he’s defending a company’s rights to earn profit ala “we gotta do whatever we can to earn more cash” but unfortunately not “we gotta do whatever we can to help every Singaporean live happily”.

But first, let me give you some excerpts from the blog post dated May 10, 2006 that really hit me:

The same attitude, though more subtly manifested, was present throughout the rest of the dialogue session as well. When asked about what ASEAN planned to do about Burma’s recalcitrance to international authority with regards to its human rights situation, he said: “There’s nothing we can do. Regime change is useless, and economic sanctions won’t work.” A student stood up, and said –

“Does that mean if thousands of people are being slaughtered in Burma, we won’t do a thing because it’s not in our self interest?”

“Yep.”

“But if everyone thinks that way, nothing will be done.”

“You’re right, and most of the time nothing is done.”

“The Americans were deluded, it doesn’t mean we supported them because we thought it would work. I believe the question you are too polite to ask is, did we suck up to the U.S? Well, yes, our basic interest was to show support for the USA, you are right. But what did we really commit to it? How much of our assets did we lend to Iraq? We put one plane in the air and one ship in the sea. And were we more of a target because of it? To which I reply…we were already a target before the

invasion.”

(Educator: This, I feel, is probably one of the reason why many Singaporeans are very selfish and only care about themselves. Because the top-down approach works, unfortunately.)

This is, of course, an entirely attractive idea. Look out for your own selves and you shan’t have to bother about the person next to you unless it is expedient for you to do so. A student asked him why we were unwilling to help to build the bridge between Malaysia and Singapore as a gesture of goodwill between neighbours, and he said:

“You want to build a bridge? Sure. But make it worth my while.”

The following is the email reply from Mr. Kausikan:

A Response from Mr. Bilahari Kausikan

Earlier today I received, to my immense surprise, an e-mail from Mr. Bilahari Kausikan, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the interest of providing fair insight to everyone who had a strong reaction to his words, whether supportive or indignant, I have decided to post his letter here (which he has already graciously given me permission to do). I believe his response was an appropriate one to be directed not only to me, but to every Singaporean looking to understand more about how our nation works.

—– Message d’origine —-

De : MFA Bilahari KAUSIKAN

?: [email protected]

Envoy?le : Mardi, 16 Mai 2006, 12h01mn 32s

Objet : Your blog

Dear Ms Goh

I read your blog response to my NE talk with great interest.

I do not agree with everything you said. But I am happy to have engaged you.

My aim in such NE talks is to start the audience thinking.

The worst response is indifference. That is very discouraging and if most young Singaporeans are merely indifferent, there is little hope for the future.

I much prefer disagreement to indifference.

Those who have advised you to ‘be careful’, tone down your criticisms or lie low have given you bad advice and do yourself, the government and Singapore no favours.

Not that we should value controversy for controversy’s sake.

Let us therefore agree to disagree where we must, but try to find some common parameters where we can.

I start from the premise that our primary responsibility is to Singapore, not a generalised humanity. For unless Singapore survives and prospers, we cannot do anything for anybody else.

I don’t think you strongly disagree with this. We perhaps disagree on how we should define our interests and what is possible at any time.

I did not mean that we should always define Singapore’s interests narrowly. But however defined, it is important that they be our interests.

Some friends who read your blog described you as intelligent but idealistic.

There is nothing wrong with being idealistic. In fact, I hope I still am too. But it should be a tough minded idealism.

Singapore is a small country. By and large, we are price takers not price setters.

This does not mean we are powerless. It does not mean we must eschew dreams.

We can, we must and we do influence our own future.

But we can do so only if we start from an objective analysis of where we are and what options are open to us.

Wishful thinking is the prerogative of larger countries.

Our starting point must be the world as it is and not as we would like it to be.

My main point at the NE lecture was that there are many challenges that have no simple solutions.

Solutions, even when available, often create new problems to which solutions also have to be found, and so it goes on and on and on.

I used strong language to get your attention. If it has offended you or anyone else, I am sorry. [Emphasis mine]

But I do not think language should distract anyone from my essential message: there are no simple solutions; in fact sometimes, at a particular point of time, there are no solutions to specific problems.

Does this mean that we should give up? Of course not. Mine is a counsel of realism, not despair.

We must strive to understand clinically and unsentimentally what can be achieved at any particular moment on any particular issue.

Perfect solutions are not to be found this side of heaven. We should not pursue the ideal at the expense of the achievable. And sometimes we must accept that we cannot do anything.

Fortunately, economic restructuring, the specific subject on which you quoted me, is not one of those areas where nothing can be done.

You may recall that this issue arose when one of your classmates asked me what I thought about outsourcing.

My reply was that this was not a choice but a fact; it was going to happen whether we liked it or not.

We might as well complain about the weather. Rather than just grumble, better prepare ourselves by getting an umbrella or warm clothing. We may still get wet or cold, but we at least mitigate its effects.

The world is becoming far more competitive and we will always have to stay ahead of the game or go down.

I don’t think anyone strongly disagreed with this. But this is not the end of the story.

Even if we can find new ways to make a living – and so far we have – there will be other problems.

I told you that half of my cohort did not finish primary school, not because they lacked ability, but because Singapore was then very poor and they could not afford to do so.

What are we going to do with these people as we move up the international value chain? Our life expectancy is increasing and the issue is going to be with us for many years to come.

Many countries face a similar problem.

But no country in history has ever moved from Third World to First World within a single generation. This poses unique challenges.

And we must face these unique challenges within our unique constraints.

It makes a difference if you have 400 million people or only 4 million; it makes a difference if you face issues from the perspective of 400 years of shared history or only 40.

It makes a difference if you are located in Southeast Asia rather than in North America or Europe or Northeast Asia.

Welfarism a la the West is not a viable option. We can’t afford it. And even the Western countries are finding out that they can’t afford it either.

This was just one example of the unique situation Singapore is in.

Your generation is going to have to confront this and many other issues. I cannot prescribe solutions for you because I do not know the answers. All I can do is point out some of the limits which are unlikely to disappear.

What the government is doing is not perfect, but it is the best that we have managed, up to now. There are no perfect solutions to any other of life’s challenges, public or personal. Your generation’s task is to improve on it, and do better for Singa_pore.

So keep on thinking; keep on writing; and do not hold back.

Please feel free to post this on your blog if you think it will be useful.

Good luck!

Sincerely,

.

Bilahari Kausikan

by Educator
http://www.temasekreview.net/2010/12/18/bilahari-kausikan-a-glance-at-the-way-he-thinks/
 

kukubird58

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Mr Bilahari Kausikan

I was trying to find out more about this person and though many of you would say that his perspective doesn’t differ much from the rest of the residents of the Ivory Tower, I feel that this email, whether or not it had been edited for political correctness, helped me understand who he is a bit more.

The following email is a response from Mr. Kausikan to this blog’s post dated May 10, 2006. It is rather shocking to myself that a politician would speak with such vocabulary and that, to me, the concern that politician like himself made comments that sound like he’s defending a company’s rights to earn profit ala “we gotta do whatever we can to earn more cash” but unfortunately not “we gotta do whatever we can to help every Singaporean live happily”.

kausikan is not a politician...he is a civil serpent and maybe a diplomat if he is involved in foreign affairs.
Poilticians are the MPs and ministars who need to stand for erection.
 

Dreamer1

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Ms gayle goh original post on 10 May 2006

Singapore: Inside and Out


I was taking a taxi home today from training with a teammate, and the taxi driver was supposed to take a left turn off the highway to drop her off at her place, before continuing on to mine. As we approached the appropriate turn, my friend noticed he was about to miss it. "Uncle, can turn left please?" she called out -- but by then it was too late, and he had missed the turn. He cried out an apology, swore softly ("God!") and had to take a long detour to make it back to her flat.

Later on, after she had gotten down from the taxi, he apologized once more to me.

"Sorry ah, I was thinking about the Worker's Party."

"Worker's Party?"

"Ya, I live in Aljunied. Worker's Party, nearly lah."

(laughing) "Oh, yeah, 56 to 44%. So you support opposition is it?"

"Ya. Actually last time, Braddell Heights, then Marine Parade, then Aljunied. Braddell Heights 48-52% you know! Very close."

"Yeah, I'm sure things will be better next election. I think Aljunied will get it. So uncle, why you support opposition?"

"Oh many reasons. I think the government does not care enough lah. You are student right? Or working?"

"I'm a student."

"You all student, I'm sure you work very hard. My son and daughter, also work very hard. Work so hard, graduate? No job. My son degree in electronics engineering, now no choice, become what? Teacher. Government don't care. Never create job, then never provide. And you know, government no family values."

"Yeah, did you hear about the retirement villages?"

"Retirement villages? What?"

"You know, Khaw Boon Wan announced that because it's cheaper to buy land in Johore, Bintam and Batam, they will send our elderly there instead, cos here it's too expensive."

"Ahhh, you see? No family values! Who will take care of them there? Nowadays, divorce rates going higher and higher. Government, only think about profit. Money, money, money. Never think about its people."

Even as I continued to make small talk with him, my mind was making connections with what I'd heard only this morning, when Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Bilahari Kausikan, visited my school for an N.E dialogue. He made an opening address which, though short, was concise and illuminating of typical Singaporean foreign policy, which is essentially as follows: what's this thing called humanity? There's no such thing as friendship in politics, there's only a convergence of interests. The world wouldn't be any different without Singapore in it, so we must strive to make ourselves extraordinary.

This was alright in and of itself, but that mentality started to come across more and more strongly as questions were asked. One student stood up during the question and answer session and asked about the impact of outsourcing on our local population. Though that wasn't an entirely relevant question to pose a man from the MFA, he had no qualms with answering it as follows:

"We have to be realistic. There is a limit to how much re-training we can do for some workers, so we have to look overseas. Look at my generation, more than half of them didn't even complete primary school education. What are we going to do? They are not going to conveniently die off..."

At this point, I was so flabbergasted I stopped listening to the rest of his answer. Perhaps he didn't think he had to watch his words very closely, as he was only speaking to a bunch of teachers and students. I don't even think many of them caught what he said. But his callous attitude was so typical of the government's seeming attitude towards the 'chaff' of our society. The fact that older workers stubbornly remaining alive had little to do with whether or not we should be protecting domestic jobs for our own workers (like that taxi driver's son, an engineer) didn't seem to concern him. He just took his time wending down the garden path of why we should outsource jobs, and the fact that we had an aging population was just a by-the-way manner of illustrating his point.

The same attitude, though more subtly manifested, was present throughout the rest of the dialogue session as well. When asked about what ASEAN planned to do about Burma's recalcitrance to international authority with regards to its human rights situation, he said: "There's nothing we can do. Regime change is useless, and economic sanctions won't work." A student stood up, and said --

"Does that mean if thousands of people are being slaughtered in Burma, we won't do a thing because it's not in our self interest?"

"Yep."

"But if everyone thinks that way, nothing will be done."

"You're right, and most of the time nothing is done."

I proceeded to question him thus --

"You say that regime change is futile with regards to Burma, and economic sanctions don't work. Yet it is interesting that these very same punitive measures were applied to Iraq, and that Singapore had no qualms whatsoever in being a part of the coalition of the willing that showed support for the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. I have three questions, then: 1) Does that mean that though we supported the Iraq invasion, it has been a futile endeavour? 2) Did we make ourselves more of a target by announcing our support for the invasion, considering we are surrounded by countries with dominantly Muslim populations? 3) Did our willingness to be a part of the coalition have anything to do with the signing of the landmark Free Trade Agreement signed between Singapore and the USA soon after the Iraq invasion?"

To which he replied,

"The Americans were deluded, it doesn't mean we supported them because we thought it would work. I believe the question you are too polite to ask is, did we suck up to the U.S? Well, yes, our basic interest was to show support for the USA, you are right. But what did we really commit to it? How much of our assets did we lend to Iraq? We put one plane in the air and one ship in the sea. And were we more of a target because of it? To which I reply...we were already a target before the invasion."

Okay, freeze-frame a moment here. I believe this man was being extremely loose with his words because, again, he was talking to a bunch of kids (900 or so of them). Hence his carelessness with language. But I appreciated this hour and a half of candour because it gave me a lot of insight, personally into how Singapore operates like: a cold and calm automaton of self-interest. We don't care about whether or not the Kurds and the Shi'ites are being helped by regime change -- we don't want to implicate ourselves too badly by, God forbid, actually committing troops or doing something more than 'one plane in the air and one ship in the sea'. And we were willing to do something that made us more of a target, knowing full well we were already a target of hostilities to our dear neighbours Malaysia, Indonesia, etc., so we could profit from a FTA. There is no interest in common humanity here, there is only a cool-headed weightage of pros and cons.

This is, of course, an entirely attractive idea. Look out for your own selves and you shan't have to bother about the person next to you unless it is expedient for you to do so. A student asked him why we were unwilling to help to build the bridge between Malaysia and Singapore as a gesture of goodwill between neighbours, and he said:

"You want to build a bridge? Sure. But make it worth my while."

This mentality of self-interest -- which, let's call a spade a spade, is really selfishness -- sounds well and good until we begin to consider a few things. Firstly, I'm quite concerned that Singapore's selfish tendencies may just come round to bite us in the behind at some point. Our reluctance to do anything about Burma means that ASEAN is weakened from within, and our reputation as a region tarnished overseas. Our small-mindedness about the matter of goodwill and ties between Malaysia is not only downright obnoxious, but spells out ill omens for diplomatic and trading ties between the nations in the future. And let's not even talk about what will happen when the water agreement expires. With regards to Iraq? Our insensitivity to our neighbours' needs and our willingness to 'suck up to the US', which he essentially conceded, is hardly going to endear ourselves to Islamic radicals in the region. Gee, I wonder which secular, Westernized, urban, capitalist, soulless, amoral, small, vulnerable, nation-state in Southeast Asia we shall bomb today, Azari Husin?

More than that though, our selfishness in our foreign policy is an outward reflection of an inward ugliness, which is to be coldly calculative of our interests and to be perfectly willing to sacrifice human welfare in the process, if we deem it a fitting sacrifice. The taxi driver's lament of "money, money, money" is precisely what Kausikan is articulating more verbosely with his "international relations is governed by no other obligation than a convergence of interests". When I say that it is our basic and fundamental moral obligation to people other than ourselves, and I use that to justify needing to temper our foreign policy with some measure of goodwill and genuine concern for the people of Burma and Iraq, others cry 'idealist'! But do these same people realize that unless we affirm this fundamental duty to someone else, a capitalist society like Singapore will always and forever place the interests of the rich above that of the poor, and tolerate, even condone the suffering of some in order to further the interests of others?

Look at this extract from an article by Asiaweek magazine, here:

"What happened to Singapore, the land of plenty? In its rush to forge a manufacturing, then a high-tech economy, the city-state rarely bothered to look back at those who were lagging. Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew developed a system based on hard work and government support for industry. Singaporeans were expected to earn their rewards. The results were astounding: a middle class emerged to build Asia's second-richest country. But with the advent of globalization and an influx of cheap foreign workers, Singapore's economy is becoming increasingly ruthless. According to its own statistics, the nation's rich are getting richer and the poor are falling further behind. To most Singaporeans, the mere existence of poor folk in need of care packages comes as a shock. And this realization has prompted an uncharacteristic bout of soul-searching. The rich-poor disparity strikes right at the heart of Singapore's development model - and challenges the city's smug self-image."

Though the article is dated 2000, nothing much has truly changed since then. In fact, our idea of finding solutions for the old and the poor are to a) buy them off with quick injections of cash via the Progress Package at election time, which has virtually no long-term implications for a sustained increase in national income due to the fact that the multiplier effect for government spending is minimal as we have a highly open economy with many withdrawals, and b) ship them off to Johore, Bintam and Batam. Oh yes, and let us not forget c) the raising of the minimum retiring age, so that more old people can sell tissue paper and clean toilets.

The truth is that Singapore should not, any longer, be willing to countenance the compromising of human welfare in order to feed its own selfish interests, which revolve around the rich and the middle classes. What about those who have been retrenched, who have worked hard but are unable to find jobs -- what about the elderly and the disabled? Our citizens are not units to be judged and weighed according to the marginal revenue each one brings to our coffers. This is a mentality which we have to accept in our domestic policies, but one we seem to be currently deadset against. Our foreign policy is a reflection of how we treat our own people: with expedience. Baldfaced, unashamed, expedience.

I appreciate and commend Mr. Bilahari Kausikan for a candid and open discussion, which generally had no holds barred (except when I asked him about Temasek Holding's takeover bid for ShinCorp and how that had had negative bearings on our bilateral ties with Thailand, to which he promptly and categorically denied any government association with the deal and insisted that the MFA was not consulted, 'nor did it want to be consulted'). But honestly, I'm creeped out by the fact that our government is probably populated with people who think just like him. And the general feedback I received from everyone was this: "He was good, but boy, I wouldn't want to be his friend." That's Singapore. Good at what it does, extremely efficient, no doubt, but boy, I'm embarrassed to be a Singaporean sometimes. We're not making very many friends, and neither are we, to be honest, being good friends to the very people in our midst who need our friendship and our helping hand the most. Who says beauty is on the inside? The ugliness within is the same ugliness without -- only, I think, with far more devastating consequences for our people.

http://i-speak.blogdrive.com/archive/158.html


Posted at 11:21 pm by gaylegoh
 

Dreamer1

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A very young Singapre citizen concluded on 10 May 2010 that

"I believe this man( Bilahari Kausikan ) was being extremely loose with his words" after she heard him speaking in her institute.

How about BG Yeo,his direct boss,I wonder he worked for BG Yeo long long already?

But is it possible that the judgement of BG yeo who earns $3 -$ 4 million a year less than Ms Goh

WTF!
 

rodent2005

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I appreciate and commend Mr. Bilahari Kausikan for a candid and open discussion, which generally had no holds barred (except when I asked him about Temasek Holding's takeover bid for ShinCorp and how that had had negative bearings on our bilateral ties with Thailand, to which he promptly and categorically denied any government association with the deal and insisted that the MFA was not consulted, 'nor did it want to be consulted').

For all his candour, he sure knows what areas are taboo.

I don't think he is that smart to shoot his mouth off and let everyone reads him like a book. He isn't going to win many friends for sure and definitely he will lose out if he wants to invest in a foreign country and must play by their rules.
 
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