The whole Asean is against Singapore recently. Let us count the ways:
1. Thailand overthrew their Prime Minister Thaksin on the ground that he pocketed US$1.5bn without paying a single cent of tax, for the sale of his stake in Shin Corp to Temasek Corp.The political backslash continued with the generals (yea, they know nuts about running the country other than taking everything by force) criticising Singapore for tapping their communication lines (ehm.. hello? S'pore is not Russia or USA at the cold war era. We don't need to know your tom yum soup recipes..), slapping a big fat fine at Shin Corp for breaching TV license rules, and sliming us for hosting Thaksin in Singapore / allowing him meet some lads from foreign media company (we cannot strap him to a chair dude!)
2. Indonesia banned the import of sand to Singapore. They knew we are enjoying a construction boom, and we needed sand. But it is evident that they conveniently forgotten how we contributed to rebuild Aceh after the big bad tsunami hit their country.
3. Malaysia intends to impose a RM20 levy for all cars entering Malaysia. The reason they gave was "M'sia should not be giving away its subsidised fuel to singaporeans without getting anything in return". This is what I call myopic and narrow-minded. They subsidised they fuel for their own people and try to obtain additional revenue from us.
Let's hope our Indochina neighbours don't "chu" any pattern.
1 comment:
Just a note that Singapore did not provide the 5 Billion loan as it was to be tied to the world bank conditions.
However, you might add that Singapore was the 1st to be there when the Tsunami strike them and is still helping with the re-building.....
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