I refer to your report 'Act of war' claim unreasonable, says Dr M .

The old man is livid. But his outburst against the present government and Singapore in canceling his pet project is uncalled for as the political landscape has changed and he is no more the premier of our country. Our former premier still doesn't understand that he is no more in power and cannot dictate to the cabinet under Pak Lah to follow his old ways in getting mega-projects done to line the pocket of cronies.

There shouldn't be any referendum done to see whether the Johor folk are in favour of the new scenic bridge. One can see that our southern neighbour has done their homework well in using international law to fight our right in building a new bridge which doesn't work in their favour.

This speaks volumes of our foreign minister and his advisers' lack of negotiation skills. Long and winding negotiations which lasted more than a decade have finally put mud on our face as we discover that we can't even build a half-bridge if our southern neighbour doesn't agree.

Whatever it is, common sense has prevailed and our government was wise to scrap the bridge project as it would be a colossal waste of public funds if we had gone ahead with such a high risk of the bridge never ever reaching Singapore.

A good lesson to be learnt here is 'don't put the cart before the horse'. We should have got the blessings of our southern neighbour before building the new CIQ complex too. Now, the contractors will laugh all the way to the bank with a hefty compensation package given to them for the aborted bridge.

As usual, the common people are the victims in this fiasco as public funds have to be used to pay for the folly of our former premier who thinks that our tiny neighbour will succumb to pressure once we build our end of the bridge.

Nobody seems to be responsible for the lose of face and pride of our nation, notwithstanding the money and time wasted on this project - it is business as usual. One can only hope the money saved from this cancelled bridge project will be put to better use in improving the people's standard of living rather and not channelled to other grand projects which only benefit a few politically-connected elite.