This is a technical take on Scenario B of the crooked bridge fiasco. Let's assume that the former PM is right, given the benefit of the doubt and the bridge construction proceeds from the Johor end of the causeway. No problem so far. The 9MP budget has provisions. A Malaysian contractor gets a contract of a few hundred million ringgit of taxpayers money. Everybody on the Malaysian side is happy.
Singapore protests with a third party note - thus giving prior notice of Singapore's misgivings. The Malaysian contractor proceeds with the construction. Piling begins on the Johor end - no problem as its in Malaysian territory. The contractor gets a first payment of a few tens of millions of taxpayers money. Everybody is again happy.
The next set of piling or caisson (a deep steel enclosure built into the causeway's bedrock) is being built into the waters of the causeway. No problem so far as the works are in Malaysian waters. Beams are connected between the first set of piles to the caisson. One section of the bridge is now completed. Good. Everybody in Malaysia is cheering 'We are buiding our bridge! We are exercising our sovereign right! It's nobody's business but Malaysia's!' Contractor gets second interim payment. Everybody is happier.
Singapore sends another third-party note that the waters on Singapore's side have turned murky and are polluted from the construction works in the waters of the causeway. More meetings between the Malaysian contractor and the Singapore ministry of environment and the pollution problem somehow gets sorted out. Caisson No 2 gets built. Bridge gets connected to caisson number 2. Two sections of the bridge is now completed. More hurrahs from Malaysian side. Patriotic MPs in the Malaysian Parliament ask questions on when the bridge will be completed. PM answers that bridge will be completed up to our border very soon.
Now, fast forward 12 months. Bridge construction reaches the half-way mark. Full stop. Singapore warns that bridge will encroach upon Singapore's territory if construction continues and full political mayhem breaks out. The bridge cannot go forward without encroaching onto Singapore territory. The bridge cannot do a 90-degree turn and join up with Singapore's end of the causeway without breaking up the existing causeway - that becomes a hostile act with dire consequences. More urgent negotiations. Reality sinks - Malaysia cannot go ahead without either taking the dispute to the Hague or the UN.
The bridge can only do one of two things - a 180-degree turn and a loop-de-loop back to Johor or leave a half-completed bridge danging halfway up the causeway for the whole construction world to have a good laugh - an eighth wonder of the world to rival the Petronas Twin Towers.
What the present PM's advisers have wisely done is a bit of damage limitation. They've warned their boss on the minefield ahead, they've foreseen the trap laid out by you-know-who. For the present PM, a diplomatic U-turn before more costs are incurred and his political image damaged irretrievably is the sensible thing. This of course would infuriate the former PM who left this unfinished episode for his successor and whose tough line and failed negotiations led Malaysia into this dead end in the first place - but a dead end now plain for all to see.
Remember those were the times when the foreign minister, the finance minister, the home minister and the prime minister were all at one time or another a one-man show. Physical connections between countries are notoriously difficult and time consuming to negotiate.
The French-Normans conquered the then English-Anglo Saxons in 1066. It took nearly 1,000 years (in 1994, I believe) for Margaret Thatcher and the French president to get the Channel Tunnel connecting Calais and Folkestone completed and running. The project still owes the banks some 6 billion. Let's hope we don't need to wait that long, or pay that much.
