Remerger

Lee Kuan Yew recently talked about the merger. There was this period when Singapore's economy wasn't doing very well, and we're always wondering about our vulnerabilities as a nation. It seemed inevitable then, when there were problems with the water agreements.

It seems like such a good idea. Although there are certain technical problems that will present problems.

How are you going to reconcile Singapore’s common law with the part of the federation that practices Islamic law? (But true, we have our MUIS to take care of this.)

How are you going to reconcile the vastly different standards of corruption between the Singapore government? (Don’t mean to imply that Malaysia has rampant corruption, because this is not true, but when you confront them with Singapore’s anal insistence on zero corruption, it’s potentially explosive.)

What are you going to do about national defence? How are the 2 ministries of defence going to co-operate with each other, when they’ve just spent much of their lives thinking about fighting each other? What's going to happen when we see each other's war plans about each other?

How are the PAP and UMNO going to deal with each other?

How’s Indonesia going to take it? Another confrontasi?

Are you going to continue paying cabinet ministers like you used to?

How is Singapore going to absorb the bumiputra laws? I think this is one of the biggest obstacles. LKY said that Singapore would merge only if the bumiputra laws were abolished. Sometimes I wonder if he wanted to comment on the merger or fire another sling from the bows and continue that argument he had with Tunku Abdul Rahman that led to Singapore's seccession?

I don't really approve of the bumiputra laws, and a "Malaysian Malaysia" sounds great in theory. But what would happen to the Malays in Malaysia if everybody competed on an even keel? Would the Chinese and Indians take over the country, and what would happen to the Malays? It would be nice if all of them could be equal, but would that ever happen? I've seen multi- racial societies before, even some where all races live in harmony but very few of them where all the races have equal status. Maybe it will 1 day happen in Australia and the USA. But we know that in Singapore Chinese have more power and more money than the Malays. And it's going to get worse because China is getting more and more powerful. I may get my blog in trouble for saying this, but what the hell. There is racial tolerance in Singapore, no doubt. More murky is whether there is racial harmony. And as for racial equality, I highly doubt it.

Maybe some day in the future we might have a situation in America where race is disappearing. Everybody has mixed blood, half Asian or half African or half Arab or God knows what combi. That's quite rare for Asians in Asia, but it might happen. Maybe racial lines will start vanishing. And then maybe we might just start thinking about the bumiputra policy.

Is a small city state like Singapore necessarily more vulnerable? And if so, how the hell did Venice exist as one for 1000 years? What was the last national merger that took place? We know about the divorce of the Czechs and the Slovaks, we know about the fracture of the Yugoslav federation, the formation of East Timor, and a nearly successful referendum that would have split Quebec from Canada. Does Kosovo belong to Albania or Serbia? Should we have a Kurdistan, cut out from parts of Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria? Does Chechnya belong to Russia or Georgia?

What’s the language policy going to be?

At least one thing is going to stay the same: those of us who never managed to figure out the words to “Majulah Singapura” aren’t going to do the same for “Negara Ku”.