QUESTION TIME | Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s recent visit to Singapore raises yet again the spectre of tough negotiations, ranging from water to the crooked bridge. But it’s not so much water under the bridge yet, because the same issues have remained unresolved over the past two decades.

The problems are much the same since I wrote a satirical piece on this in 2006 for The Edge, over 12 years ago. Except that the article then was after Mahathir had stepped down in 2003, following 22 long years as prime minister. No one anticipated that he would again be prime minister handling the same problems 15 years later!

Singapore had then actually asked for the right to overfly Johor during military practices. Then as now, I suspect, Singapore wanted a total solution to all issues, refusing to negotiate on each individual one at a time.

And yes, Singapore actually produced a booklet then, titled “Water talks? If only it could” to explain their case on why they can’t agree to a tariff increase for the 100-year (true) agreement on water which expires in 2061.

Our new stance

Below is the 2006 article with some amendments, which pretty much reflects things today. Here goes:

Go forward we must from this impasse. We are sick and tired of what was, what happened, which version was correct, and all the different accounts over that bridge that was not to be between Malaysia and Singapore.

We need to look forward, not back, and looking forward means settling some key, thorny bilateral issues we have with Singapore. That means talks. Does anybody doubt that talks will be resumed some time? No! It’s a question of when, really.

And when those talks resume, we will be fully prepared. Remember, we are dealing with tough nuts and we must be every bit as tough too – no, even tougher, after these years of softness and giving away things – precious things – like water. We must get some of those back, must we not.

We must anticipate, attack, and counter-attack at every turn. Here’s how the rough scenario should be as we see it, to show our new tough stance, with new urbane, suave, yet oh-so-tough negotiators.

‘S’ denotes the Singapore negotiator and ‘M’ the new Malaysian one.

S: You guys pulled a fast one on us – abandoning that bridge because of our demands. (Then prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi gave up the bridge project in 2006 when no agreement was reached).

Honest, we didn’t see that coming. You know, we would still like for our fighter planes and bombers to fly over Johor.

M: You can and you don’t even have to link it to the bridge.

S: What? You don’t want the bridge anymore, not even the crooked one? But Mahathir said….

M: Look, even we had our doubts for a while, but now we are very clear on this, Mahathir is definitely not in charge anymore – no more – and he is not, repeat, not coming back despite what you read in your Straits Times...