Malaysia closes Pedra Branca case, so Singapore team goes drinking 'to drown sorrows', publishes a book

SINGAPORE — In February 2017, when Malaysia sought to challenge a 2008 judgment by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that awarded Pedra Branca to Singapore, the Government here sprang into action immediately.

Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan roped in three veterans from Singapore’s original legal team working on the territorial dispute: Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh, former Deputy Prime Minister S Jayakumar, and former Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong.

They agreed straight away to look into the case.

The country spared no effort from the get-go, assembling a team comprising members from various government ministries: Foreign affairs, law, communications and information, and defence.

The Attorney-General’s Chambers, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore and the National Archives of Singapore were also part of the group, with Professor Jayakumar leading the team.

They spent more than a year doing preparation work, saw Malaysia file a second application in June 2017 seeking an interpretation of the original judgment, and then, the news came.

Malaysia, under its newly elected premier Mahathir Mohamad, withdrew the two applications a fortnight before the scheduled oral hearings were due last year.

The two cases were filed when Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak was in power, but he was ousted by Dr Mahathir in a general election in May last year.

The Singapore team was at once relieved and disappointed.

Professor Koh said: “I felt like a boxer who had trained for… an important contest, and at the last minute, to be given a walkover. So, the three of us decided to do the next best thing — to write a book about it.”

The book, titled Pedra Branca: Story of the Unheard Cases, was launched on Wednesday (Jan 30) at the Central Public Library.

It offers a behind-the-scenes look into how the team geared up for the written pleadings and oral hearings for the latest cases.

Prof Koh, who was Singapore’s agent in the original Pedra Branca case, co-wrote it with Prof Jayakumar and Deputy Attorney-General Lionel Yee, who was part of Singapore’s legal team for the cases.

Ms Daphne Hong, director-general of the Attorney-General’s Chambers’ international affairs division, led a team of young international lawyers who were responsible for the main legal work.

Prof Koh recalled that she was so disappointed by Malaysia’s proposal to drop the cases that she took her team out to a nearby bar to “drown their sorrows”.

The row over Pedra Branca — which sits at the entrance to the Singapore Strait, about 30km east of the country —  began in 1979 when, for the first time, Malaysia published a map indicating the island to be its territory. The dispute was brought before the ICJ in 2003.

In 2008, the court ruled that Singapore had sovereignty over Pedra Branca.

SINGAPORE WANTS GOOD TIES WITH NEIGHBOURS

Speaking at the book launch, Dr Balakrishnan reiterated that Singapore, as a small nation, wants good ties with its neighbours and “as many friends as possible”.

Singapore’s paramount objectives, he added, are to protect its sovereignty, independence and national interests in accordance with international law, and to ensure all parties honour their agreements fully.

“Whatever new challenges Singapore has to face, we will always mount a decisive, effective and collective whole-of-government response in order to protect our interests, and we will emerge from each episode stronger, and more experienced and more determined than before,” he said.

Singapore is now locked in an ongoing dispute with Malaysia over airspace and maritime boundaries. Bilateral discussions are continuing, but Dr Balakrishnan said again that Singapore is prepared to seek recourse through an appropriate international third-party dispute-settlement procedure.

On the Pedra Branca cases, the book’s authors said that having a cohesive, multi-faceted team was an important feature.

The team had to master not only the legal aspects, but the facts and the technical issues as well.

There was robust engagement with the various agencies, which had to understand the legal issues so as to be pro-active in seeking information and undertaking relevant studies, and in some cases, even probing the lawyers developing the arguments.

Mr Yee said that this cohesiveness will become even more important “as the business of government gets more complex”.