Anifah says take LKY with pinch of salt

By Shannon Teoh

September 06, 2011

The foreign minister said today that Lee is no longer speaks for Singapore as he has quit the Cabinet and stepped down as minister mentor. — file pic

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 6 — The Najib administration has dismissed remarks by Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew who said yesterday that any attempt by Malaysia to retaliate over the return of the Tanjong Pagar railway land to the republiccould have led to war.

The foreign ministry said the former prime minister of the island state was no longer “a spokesman for Singapore’s future generations” as Lee had quit the republic’s Cabinet and stepped down as minister mentor soon after general elections in May.

“We can’t take seriously what he says in his advancing age. This is not Singapore’s stance,” Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman told The Malaysian Insider today.

He added that bilateral discussions with Singapore’s current government led by Lee Hsien Loong — Kuan Yew’s son — “had a different theme” and recent visits by Datuk Seri Najib Razak had resulted in “a lot of understandings.”

Kuan Yew, who stepped down as minister mentor two weeks after the May 7 polls had concluded, told a forum of 1,700 students at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) last night that he was pleased that Malaysia was honouring bilateral agreements.

“It shows that Malaysians are observing the agreements they have signed without trying to retaliate in other directions, such as water, which will lead to war,” the republic’s first and longest-serving prime minister had said.

Kuan Yew, who served as PM for 31 years before occupying the new posts of senior minister and minister mentor for a combined time period of 21 years, had stepped down after the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) had suffered its worst election result ever.

The land swap has been contentious since the Malaysia-Singapore Points of Agreement (POA) was signed in 1990 over the issue of the future of the railway land. The POA was signed between Lee and former Malaysian Finance Minister Tun Daim Zanuddin.

Under the agreement, KTM was to vacate its historic railway station at Tanjong Pagar and move to Bukit Timah while all of KTM’s land between Bukit Timah and Tanjong Pagar would revert to Singapore.

Najib had committed to the agreement with Singapore during his May 2010 visit, calling it a “win-win” situation for both Southeast Asian neighbours.