other views on the crooked bridge

Bad boy (Singapore) PM Abdullah decides the causeway will not go. With this simple decision, he has removed three issues that plagued relationship between Malaysia and Singapore. There is now no need to fight over the supply of sand, the use of airspace over Johore, the building of a bridge at JB. Malaysia saved over M$500M, maintained sovereignty over its airspace and will not fear the enlargement of the island of Singapore. Now, it has only to deal with the issue of water supply to Singapore. Malaysia holds all the aces as Singapore need to buy water from Malaysia. media_junkie (Malaysian) Pucat in the face! Muka kena sapu arang! What kind of a PM is this? How to take him seriously on anything. He calls you to take arms against an enemy and you do it, half way through pulling the trigger he will say pull back. You think your enemy going to listen to him? Mati la kita? Gozie Trust me, end of the day we will sell our air space and sand to Singapore! First we lose our demand to increase water price, we lose on mycard, we lose on the bridge, we lose everything, dude the above are just some views i extracted from littlespeck.com. the comments were anything but the economic benefits of building the bridge. it is all about tic for tac, winning and losing, national pride and historical animosities. why would selling sand be seen as a losing proposition? isn't sand a commodity like oil? if malaysia or any country can sell oil, why is selling sand so disturbing? malaysia will be paid for the market value of the sand. and other countries are also selling sand. it is commerce and trade. one point raised concerning selling sand is not to see singapore growing bigger geographically. now that is a very naive way of looking at things. sand is not a rare commodity that only malaysia possesses. if the price is right, singapore will get the sand from wherever and whoever. singapore is trying to buy sand from malaysia and indonesia as it is only economically sound to do so. why can't the malaysians see it from another angle, that singapore is willing to spend its money buying malaysian sand and malaysia also earns foreign exchange? it is so idiotic. pardon my expression. the other key issue is that malaysia and badawi are seen as weak and giving in to singapore and singapore won! why don't they say, hey, malaysia is blessed to have a professional and rational leader who can make tough decisions based on facts and not on emotions? and singapore will see in badawi a wise and reasonable man and will do its best to support badawi and may even feel that they owe one to badawi. the latter may seen singapore bending backwards to accommodate badawi in the next round of negotiation on other issues. why must the relationship be always so contentious and one upmanship?