Bridge: were our lawyers afraid to voice out?
Ahmad Ikhlas
May 3, 2006 
malaysiakini.com

I refer to Mukhriz Mahathir's assertion that Malaysia ought take the matter of the building of the bridge to replace the Causeway to international arbitration and accept the outcome, whatever it is. He also inferred that Malaysia should not have ‘retreated’ without putting up a ‘fierce battle’.

Whilst applauding Mukhriz for harbouring such patriotic sentiments, may I, then, query the gentleman?

Why couldn’t have Malaysia waited for such ‘arbitration’ to take place and await final judgment before embarking on the building of the CIQ complex as well as tendering out the contract for bridge construction to the contractor Gerbang Perdana?"

Instead, we went ahead ‘gung-ho’ style to get the CIQ complex ready, instructed the contractors for the bridge to go ahead and build without having the common sense to realise that here is an issue that involves a physical structure linking two separate sovereign nations. Obviously, to tinker and meddle with such a structure, even on ‘our’ side, requires tacit consent of the other sovereign state.

The fact that Singapore was, in my opinion, impetuous in her demands for sand and airspace to acquiesce to such construction (and demolition) does not deter the fact that we did, actually, ‘jump the gun’ in proceeding.

Now, why did this happen?

Most probably because the man ordering it was so used to getting things done his way sans any semblance of opposition and was averse to tolerating alternative views that even legal icons who may have known the folly from the very beginning were apprehensive to voice their learned opinion.

Singaporeans may be ‘kiasu’ but what do we have to say of the man who created Mukhriz?