Singapore, Malaysia and the WikiLeaks - the leak is finally leaked.

On Dec. 12, Asia Sentinel printed a story relating WikiLeaks revelations from Singapore diplomats about Malaysian political affairs, particularly concerning Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim. Because the cables have seemingly never been accessible through the various WikiLeaks websites and mirror sites, some readers have questioned whether they exist.

17. (S//NF) Turning briefly to Malaysia, the Australians said that Singapore's intelligence services and Lee Kuan Yew have told ONA in their exchanges that opposition leader Anwar "did indeed commit the acts for which he is currently indicted," citing unshared technical intelligence. ONA assessed, and their Singapore counterparts concurred, "it was a set up job-and he probably knew that, but walked into it anyway."

C O N F I D E N T I A L SINGAPORE 000310 SIPDIS SIPDIS NOFORN E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/13/2028 TAGS: PREL, MY, SN SUBJECT: AMBASSADOR'S DISCUSSION WITH MFA PERMSEC HO ON MALAYSIAN ELECTIONS REF: KUALA LUMPUR 160 (NOTAL) Classified By: Ambassador Patricia L. Herbold for reasons 1.4 (b,d). 1. (C) The Ambassador and MFA Permanent Secretary Peter Ho met over lunch on March 12, discussing issues including Singapore's perceptions of the elections in Malaysia (reftel.) Ho said that in Singapore "everybody was shocked" by the extraordinarily strong showing by the opposition in Malaysia. People knew that change was coming, perhaps one election down the road, but did not anticipate that change could come this fast. 2. (C) Ho said that on the ruling National Front (BN) side, PM Abdullah Badawi is probably done for politically, despite having been sworn in again as PM on March 10. Former PM Mahathir Mohamad will keep throwing stones at Abdullah. The political knives will be out for Abdullah's son-in-law UMNO politician Khairy Jamaluddin, whom nobody likes because he got where he is through family ties. As for Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, he is an opportunist. Although he has not been critical of Singapore, he will not hesitate to go in that direction if it is expedient for him to do so. Najib's political fortunes continue to be haunted by the Mongolian murder scandal. (Note: The scandal involves the ongoing trial of Najib's former political adviser Abdul Razak Baginda for abetting the 2006 murder of the Mongolian woman who had been Abdul Razak's ex-lover; two policemen from Najib's protective detail also are on trial for carrying out the murder. End Note.) The MIC's Samy Vellu bears a large share of the responsibility for the BN's poor showing in the elections. The Indian community's unhappiness, which helped create the current political dynamic in Malaysia, reflects the fact that Samy Vellu neglected the interests of the Indian community, even when its temples were being destroyed, focusing instead on his business activities in India, Ho said. 3. (C) Ho stated that on the opposition side, former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim came out of the elections in a strong position, as shown by the electoral victories by his wife (whom Ho commented he has met and finds very impressive) and his daughter. The Islamic PAS will be pushed in a more pragmatic, less radical direction by its increased proximity to real political power. Within the ruling coalition, UMNO could find itself pulled in the opposite direction as it comes under increasing pressure to compete with PAS, Ho said. 4. (C) Ho expressed pessimism about Malaysia's future prospects. Malaysians from the Chinese and Indian minority communities keep leaving the country. The relative size of the Malay Muslim majority keeps increasing. As a result, more Malaysian students are studying in religious schools and fewer are studying in more rigorous secular schools. This is harming Malaysia's international competitiveness, Ho said.

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 SINGAPORE 001019 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/16/2018 TAGS: PGOV, PHUM, PREL, ASEAN, SN, MY, BU, ID, IN, TH, KN, CH, RU SUBJECT: DASD SEDNEY HEARS OF SINGAPORE'S MALAYSIA ANXIETIES (AND BILAHARI'S TAKE ON THE REST OF THE WORLD) REF: A. SINGAPORE 1001 B. SINGAPORE 586 Classified By: DCM Daniel Shields for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). 1. (C) Summary: Singapore perceives a distinct possibility of racial conflict in Malaysia, Bilahari Kausikan, MFA Second Permanent Secretary told David Sedney, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia September 15. Kausikan offered his view that if racial conflict provoked ethnic Chinese to flee Malaysia, they could "overwhelm" Singapore. Providing views on events elsewhere, Kausikan said the situation in Thailand is not as dangerous as in Malaysia, but the current political instability in Thailand would continue. Indonesia is the most stable of the three countries, but its governance is weak. Burma's neighbors prioritize its stability, fearing that the junta's collapse could provoke a Yugoslavia-style breakup.

Anxiety About Malaysia ---------------------- 2. (C) The situation in neighboring Malaysia is confused and dangerous, Singapore perceives a distinct possibility of racial conflict, Singapore MFA Second Permanent Secretary Bilahari Kausikan told Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia David Sedney in a September 15 meeting. (Embassy Comment: The Kausikan meeting took place a few days after Malaysian authorities arrested three persons, including two ethnic Chinese citizens, under the Internal Security Act, causing a political uproar, but no security incidents. End Comment.) Kausikan warned that Malaysia's current political instability could lead to unconstitutional action or a "constitutional emergency." He did not think that opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had found the thirty crossover votes in Parliament necessary to fulfill his vow to bring down the government. But one side or the other might try the "time-tested strategy" of inciting communal conflict or some other incident to provoke a reaction. The possibility of conflict is high because the three competing factions backing Anwar, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, and Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak all have much at stake. Should Anwar fail in his bid to become Prime Minister, he would likely end up back in jail. Najib "has his neck on the line" in connection with a high-profile murder case and also needed to prevail politically in order to avoid prosecution. Having been in power for so long, ruling UMNO party leaders would also likely face repercussions if they lost power. 3. (C) A lack of competent leadership is a real problem for Malaysia, Kausikan said. Anwar might be the most competent leader, but he too comes with liabilities. While Anwar had made concessions to non-Muslims in order to build his coalition, he is unlikely to live up to his commitments to his non-Muslim partners should he gain power, Kausikan predicted. Should racial conflict break out, China would be compelled to weigh in on behalf of the ethnic Chinese population in Malaysia, though it was unlikely (at that stage) that anyone in Malaysia would listen to China's concerns. Kausikan said the GOS is also watching the situation carefully as it fears any significant racial conflict in Malaysia could lead to an influx of ethnic Chinese to Singapore and "overwhelm" Singapore. (NOTE: 60,000 - 70,000 Malaysians commute daily to work in Singapore. END NOTE.) Kausikan characterized Malaysian traditional foreign policy as including elements that are 1) anti-western, 2) pro-business, 3) supportive of China's growing role in the region. However, as China's influence in the region grows, Malaysia's "pro-Malay" domestic policies would eventuallylead to problems with China. SINGAPORE 00001019 002 OF 003 Thailand Not as Dangerous -------------------------

9. (C) Koh rated the performance of Malaysia's new prime minister Najib Razak as a "brave beginning" but added that he fears there may be skeletons in Najib's closet that will come back to haunt him. Likewise, Koh expressed reservations about opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who he said is so determined to be prime minister that he may make "Faustian bargains" to achieve that goal. Koh observed that the 2008 Malaysian general election reflected a "tectonic shift in Malaysian politics that we don't fully understand." In that election, for the first time, young urban Malays showed themselves willing to vote for political parties that did not base their identities expressly on race, he said.

(Source)

Singapore leaders getting a bitter taste of its own medicine?

As Singapore appears to be embroiled in a protracted diplomatic spat with its neighbors following a series of damning releases by WikiLeaks, one cannot helping wondering how a small country has become so maligned and vilified at least in the region after the United States of America.

The shocking releases of Singapore diplomats making unflattering remarks about Malaysia, Thailand, Japan and India by two Australian papers last Sunday was followed swiftly by another diplomatic cable leaked on WikiLeaks a few days later with PAP strongman Lee Kuan Yew calling Burma’s generals “stupid” and “dense” and expressing his reservations about Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Vietnam joining ASEAN.

Poor George Yeo must have a busy time of late trying to contain the damage from the diplomatic fallout.

It doesn’t matter if MFA comments on the leak, less so if they are really mere “gossip” and “cocktail talk” as Mr Yeo will want the world to believe. The fact remains that Singapore’s reputation has taking a battling with even the Japanese media giving extensive coverage on Tommy Koh’s remarks on them being a “big fat loser.”

Does it surprise us or anybody that our diplomats and leaders are capable of making the most callous, disrespectful and yes, undiplomatic comments about their purported friends and allies within diplomatic circles?

Singapore officials have acquired a reputation of being condescending and arrogant with a “superiority complex” over its neighbors, noted a Malaysian diplomat which is why Malaysia Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said quite frankly that he did not expect an apology from Singapore when he handed a protest note to the Singapore’s High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur.

The “holier-than-thou” attitude displayed by our leaders has peeved off quite a number of countries over the years though they may not have expressed it explicitly out of courtesy, coupled with their propensity to sue the foreign media, doesn’t make them exactly popular among some countries in the region.

While Australia has maintained friendly ties with Singapore for a number of years, the same cannot be said of the Australia media whose coverage of Singapore is always less than favorable.

Nearly 1,000 cables were leaked by WikiLeaks exclusively to the two Australian papers – why did they choose to pick on Singapore only and not on others?

Consider the following headline carried on the Sydney Morning Herald:

Big fat red faces for Singapore leaders

Though the comments were made by Singapore diplomats, the Australian paper chose to shift the focus to Singapore’s leaders instead.....more

Has WikiLeaks changed journalism forever?

WikiLeaks is a whistleblowing Web site that became the focus of a global debate over its role in the release of thousands of confidential messages about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the conduct of American diplomacy around the world.

The once-fringe Web site, which aims to bring to light secret information about governments and corporations, was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, an Australian activist and journalist, along with a group of like-minded activists and computer experts.

Wikileaks made its initial reputation by publishing material as diverse as documents about toxic dumping in Africa, protocols from Guantánamo Bay, e-mail messages from Sarah Palin’s personal account and 9/11 pager messages. When it published tens of thousands of confidential military field reports about the two wars in July 2010, it was denounced by American officials for endangering the lives of soldiers and civilians.The release of some of a trove of 250,000 diplomatic cables obtained by Wikileaks led to anger and criticism from officials around the world.

Wikileaks made the material on Iraq and Afghanistan available to a number of news organizations, including The New York Times, in advance. The Guardian shared the diplomatic cable collection with The New York Times. By early December, Wikileaks had posted only a few thousand on its website.

The uproar over the diplomatic cables coincided with mounting legal troubles for Mr. Assange, its founder.

Think back to 2008, when WikiLeaks simply released documents that suggested the government of Kenya had looted its country. The follow-up in the mainstream media was decidedly muted.

Then last spring, WikiLeaks adopted a more journalistic approach — editing and annotating a 2007 video from Baghdad in which an Apache helicopter fired on men who appeared to be unarmed, including two employees of Reuters. The reviews were mixed, with some suggesting that the video had been edited to political ends, but the disclosure received much more attention in the press.

In July, WikiLeaks began what amounted to a partnership with mainstream media organizations, including The New York Times, by giving them an early look at the so-called Afghan War Diary, a strategy that resulted in extensive reporting on the implications of the secret documents.

Then in November, the heretofore classified mother lode of 250,000 United States diplomatic cables that describe tensions across the globe was shared by WikiLeaks with Le Monde, El Pais, The Guardian and Der Spiegel. (The Guardian shared documents with The New York Times.) The result was huge: many articles have come out since, many of them deep dives into the implications of the trove of documents.

Notice that with each successive release, WikiLeaks has become more strategic and has been rewarded with deeper, more extensive coverage of its revelations. It’s a long walk from WikiLeaks’s origins as a user-edited site held in common to something more akin to a traditional model of publishing, but seems to be in keeping with its manifesto to deliver documents with “maximum possible impact.”

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’s founder and guiding spirit, apparently began to understand that scarcity, not ubiquity, drives coverage of events. Instead of just pulling back the blankets for all to see, he began to limit the disclosures to those who would add value through presentation, editing and additional reporting. In a sense, Mr. Assange, a former programmer, leveraged the processing power of the news media to build a story and present it in comprehensible ways. (Of course, as someone who draws a paycheck from a mainstream journalism outfit, it may be no surprise that I continue to see durable value in what we do even amid the journalistic jujitsu WikiLeaks introduces.)

And by publishing only a portion of the documents, rather than spilling information willy-nilly and recklessly endangering lives, WikiLeaks could also strike a posture of responsibility, an approach that seems to run counter to Mr. Assange’s own core anarchism.

Although Mr. Assange is now arguing that the site is engaged in what he called a new kind of “scientific journalism,” his earlier writings suggest he believes the mission of WikiLeaks is to throw sand in the works of what he considers corrupt, secretive and inherently evil states. He initiated a conspiracy in order to take down what he saw as an even greater conspiracy.

“WikiLeaks is not a news organization, it is a cell of activists that is releasing information designed to embarrass people in power,” said George Packer, a writer on international affairs at The New Yorker. “They simply believe that the State Department is an illegitimate organization that needs to be exposed, which is not really journalism.”

By shading his radicalism and collaborating with mainstream outlets, Mr. Assange created a comfort zone for his partners in journalism. They could do their jobs and he could do his.

“The notion that this experience has somehow profoundly changed journalism, the way that information gets out or changed the way that diplomacy happens, seems rather exaggerated,” said Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, which used information from the leaks to report a series of large articles.

“It was a big deal, but not an unfamiliar one. Consumers of information became privy to a lot of stuff that had been secret before,” Mr. Keller said. “The scale of it was unusual, but was it different in kind from the Pentagon Papers or revelation of Abu Ghraib or government eavesdropping? I think probably not.”

(Read more here)

WikiLeaks says it won't be threatened by Pentagon and will publish its remaining 15,000 Afghan war documents within a month.

WikiLeaks will publish its remaining 15,000 Afghan war documents within a month, despite warnings from the U.S. government, the organization's founder said Saturday.

The Pentagon has said that secret information will be even more damaging to security and risk more lives than WikiLeaks' initial release of some 76,000 war documents.

"This organization will not be threatened by the Pentagon or any other group," Assange told reporters in Stockholm. "We proceed cautiously and safely with this material."

In an interview with The Associated Press, he said that if U.S. defense officials want to be seen as promoting democracy then they "must protect what the United States' founders considered to be their central value, which is freedom of the press."

"For the Pentagon to be making threatening demands for censorship of a press organization is a cause for concern, not just for the press but for the Pentagon itself," the Australian added.

He said WikiLeaks was about halfway though a "line-by-line review" of the 15,000 documents and that "innocent parties who are under reasonable threat" would be redacted from the material....more here.