About Sovereignty

Brunei and Singapore celebrated 40 years of currency interchangeability by releasing new $20 notes with a same back - scenes from Singapore and Brunei, but with different fronts - Brunei $20 with their sultan, and Singapore $20 with Yusof Ishak.

At the press conference, Brunei described the notes as signifying that the countries were two sovereign nations on one side, and the close cooperation we had on the other. One comment left on the ST online was that this currency interchangeability meant that Singapore was vulnerable to the manipulations of Brunei. For example. North Korea is believed to be counterfeiting US currency. Our arrangement with Brunei would open us to the same risks.

However, that is only a possibility and not a probability, and the comment was alarmist at best and I don't think anyone took it seriously. However, what is interesting was mention of sovereignty by the Brunei leader, and the confidence that this 40 year cooperation should continue. Actually, if either country should be worried, it should be Brunei, as they have the natural resources to back their currency, but Singapore's backing is based on years of building up the reserves. In the early years, they probably had a greater risk that Singapore would just print money, and flood Brunei with "cheap" Singapore dollars. Even now, Brunei with less than 1/10th of Singapore's population probably have more reason to feel threatened but does not.

Both countries deal with each other with mutual respect as sovereign nations. There is no question that this arrangement would threaten the sovereignty of either.

In contrast, Malaysia feels their sovereignty is threatened all the time, whether it's the water issue, the causeway/bridge issue, our land reclamation programme, or our investment (or consultation) in the Iskandar Development Region.

Indonesia also feels necessary to raise the issue of their sovereignty over the Defence Cooperation Agreement which was tied to the Extradition pact. Now they want to amend the DCA because they feel their sovereignty is being threatened.

Thailand also felt necessary to raise the "Singapore boogeyman" with their concerns over the security of their mobile phone communications because of the Singapore ownership of one of their telco. The coup general has since admitted that it was a strategy to rally support of the the Thai people.

I thought it interesting that Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, all vastly bigger countries with larger population than Singapore would worry that a small island state of 4m people could threatened their sovereignty, while Brunei, one of the smaller countries in the world (tho still larger than Singapore) with a population less than 1/10th of Singapore is not.

Of course, it's arguable whether a currency interchangeability agreement is more threatening than any of the other issues. Probably not.

M'sian PM weds again
ST 9 June

Congrats Pak Lah!















The Judgement of Paris.
ST online 9 June
Judge overrules Sheriff electronic monitoring and orders Paris back behind bars. It's a simple life.

Wild Ride in a Wheelchair
ST, 9 June 2007

And here we were wasting our time getting bus fitted with wheelchair ramps! :-)

NETS faces competition? What competition?

Nets' chief executive officer Poh Mui Hoon said that Nets has 'no choice' but to increase fees to ensure that banks will continue issuing their cards.

There are some 600,000 debit cards in use in Singapore now and as these pay better revenue, the banks prefer to issue them. If Nets does not offer the issuers better rates, it will disappear from the scene, like domestic debit schemes in Portugal and Belgium did, she added.

Does she think we are stupid or what? Banks will stop issuing NETS card? What NETS card? You mean the one we use to draw money from ATMs? So banks are going to stop issuing ATM cards? The first bank that tries that will see a run on their bank as deposits are withdrawn and accounts are closed.

NETS is owned by the banks (DBS, OCBC, & UOB) so the argument is that NETS is in competition with itself (the debit cards) so need to raise fees?

And so what if they haven't raised rates in 22 years? As someone else has pointed out, these are rates, it grows as the turnover increases.

I'm moving my money to Citibank. They have ATMs at every MRT station. That's pretty convenient.

About 2 months ago, there was a launch of a residential development in Johor with hundreds of bungalows for sale following the wake of a few optimistic announcements of developments in Johor known as the Iskandar Development Region (IDR).

I don't have that kind of money to invest, but even if I had, I was skeptical. Quite a few Singaporeans have been burnt in such land development schemes that intentionally or not became scams.

A few weeks after that promo at HDB Hub, there was another promo at Suntec, and this time a man turned up with newspaper cuttings and a testimony to warn potential investors of the risks of investing in M'sia. He was one of those who had been burnt previously. He had invested in a development project but halfway through the developer ran out of cash or just ran out. The project was stalled and remained unfinished, and uninhabitable. Then looters started stealing whatever was there.

The Singapore investors had no recourse, no help, no hope.

The new IDR has the backing of the M'sian govt and it is clear that they are committed to the project and the vision of what it promises.

But the people are not behind it. How long can they be committed? How sure can we be of the commitment? What happens if, because of Singapore's investment in the IDR, the PAS wins Johor in the next election?

The M'sian govt is making all the right noises, but the people are making all the wrong ones.

What we have here is a barking dog who's also wagging it's tail. Which end should we believe?



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