Sunday, June 10, 2007

Durian diplomacy, part 2

The Straits Times' Janadas Devan has a column on "durian diplomacy" today, touching on the thorny side of the term -- nearly one month after Sophie talked about the thorns in the new-found diplomacy between Singapore and Malaysia.

Nevertheless, his column is quite interesting as the senior writer is always colourful in his writing although dad doesn't always agree with him. For example, he wrote:

The controversy was a reminder that Singapore-Malaysia relations can never be a simple matter of getting straight to the fruits. The fruits doubtless exist, but the thorns are always getting in the way, and the odour of history never fails to insinuate its way into even the most positive moments. Datuk Seri Abdullah may well have, unintentionally, chosen the perfect image for the relationship.

Janadas also analysed the origin of the word diplomacy and touched on other forms of diplomacy -- golf diplomacy, ping-pong diplomacy and shuttle diplomacy.

But neither Janadas nor Sophie described the durian diplomacy as prickly in bilateral terms. :-)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was never easy to deal with Malaysia-Singapore relationship since their seperation in 1965. To deal with Malaysia, I believe Singapore need to understand Malaysian Malay's culture and their way of life. You need to 'lose some' in order to keep good relationship with Malaysia.

Singapore need to acknowledge the fact that it is situated in the centre of Malay speaking region and yet its people are not fluent or not even know how to speak proper Malay. So, why not learning from now on how to speak and write Malay so you can understand Malay well?

Anonymous said...

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