It was reported that the recent Vietnamese rioters burnt our national flag and industrial parks because our Singapore’s flag was mistaken as the PRC’s flag. That sounded like a convenient excuse for both the authorities of Vietnam as well as Singapore. To the Vietnamese, it could claim that the fire was an honest mistake. To the Singapore Government, it could claim that the fire was not due to any failed foreign policy.
I don’t believe the Vietnamese could not differentiate Singapore’s flag from China’s flag. Singapore and Vietnam are both Asean members. There is so much dealings between both countries economically and politically. They know Singapore so much so that even their rural village women prefer to marry Singaporean men than those of other Asean countries!
You see, long before our Singapore industrial parks were built on the Vietnamese land, there would have been huge local and national publicity by the Vietnamese propaganda department on those upcoming industrial zones. You can bet that every week, over a period of months or years, the Vietnamese media would not fail to cook up a publicity storm for local residents and international business consumption! It is very unlikely that local Vietnamese would mistake those industrial parks as PRC owned or managed. And the parks have been there for years! There were so many Vietnamese working in our industrial parks over there that even though a few misguided souls mistook them as PRC assets, they would have been quickly corrected by the many people in the parks!
Why then the Vietnamese rioters burnt our national flag? Given the iron fist ruling of the Vietnamese Government, I do not believe riots of such a scale was possible without secret encouragement from the authority. No doubt, the main target of the violent riots was PRC. But I believe the riots were also planned by some influential Vietnamese politicians to serve a message to our Singapore Government.
Did the Vietnamese take the opportunity of recent anti-China riots to serve our Singapore Government a message that “it has been too close to China for Vietnam’s comfort”? If so, what would it, and our other neighbouring countries, do to us next?Despite our government’s claim of neutrality, we ordinary Singaporeans could sense, for many years, that the PAP Government is very much closer to the PRC Government than to its Vietnamese counterparts. There were rumours that some Asean countries even suspected our Singapore Government was tactfully on the side of China when it came to their disputes with China over territorial claims in the South China Sea. As a result, it was speculated that Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines were not too happy with the Singapore Government.
I do not know whether how true were those rumours. It is hoped that our government has done its foreign diplomatic sums correct. What we do not want to see is that our foreign policies end up serving the interests of some companies and agencies, at the expense of majority Singaporeans. Indeed, there were times I did ask myself, how much of our high cost of living was caused by our government’s foreign policies and relations with neighbouring countries, and how much was due to our government’s greed? One thing is for sure, though, Singaporeans’ falling income is caused by the PAP Government’s policies!
One thing I am not sure, though; some people told me that Singaporeans’ hearts were recently broken – and it was caused by the PAP Government’s statement that Singapore belonged to both the citizens and all foreigners!
Celia Lim