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Insight: Fifty years of Indonesia-Singapore relations
Indonesia-Singapore bilateral relations were brittle and sometimes even fragile.
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Marina Bay Sands, one of Singapore's most popular tourism spots. (Shutterstock/-)
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t the outset, Indonesia-Singapore bilateral relations were brittle and sometimes even fragile. During the Sukarno presidency, Singapore was part of Malaysia, which he opposed as a British neo-colonial entity aimed at limiting Indonesia’s regional entitlement in Southeast Asia.
When president Soeharto took office in 1967, his request for clemency for two Indonesian marines sentenced to death for murder at the end of the Confrontation was rejected by prime minister Lee Kuan Yew. This was because the rule of law is supreme in Singapore and PM Lee was worried that his principle of meritocracy would be taken for granted by others in the future if he gave in to the request. For president Soeharto it was a disappointment, because the murder was committed during the days of the old regime.
For seven years the relationship was more or less half frozen because the two leaders did not see eye-to-eye on the principles of state.
However, the two leaders eventually came to a stage where they respected each other well. For PM Lee, president Soeharto was the personification of an Indonesian leader who could recognize Singapore as an equal while president Soeharto thought that PM Lee was a fellow leader he could cooperate with and who could help Indonesia. This happened in the context of ASEAN, which was set up in 1967 and was consolidated at the first ASEAN Summit in Bali in 1976.
