The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) turned forty in August 2007. To many scholars and other observers who closely followed the evolution of the organization, the celebration came with high expectations. ASEAN watchers especially looked forward to the unveiling of the much-awaited ASEAN Charter, which would set fresh directions for the Association. The Charter was expected to facilitate by 2020 the envisioned establishment of an ASEAN Community with three pillars: an ASEAN Security Community (ASC), an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), and an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. Observers also looked to the Charter to indicate how far ASEAN might be willing and able to move toward a less pragmatic and more normative framework for regionalism in Southeast Asia, including the possible transformation of the organization itself. Would ASEAN widen its traditional focus on interstate affairs to encompass a more people-centered agenda? What policies and actions would such an enlarged horizon imply?

Increasingly in the late 1990s, ASEAN was considered a sunset arrangement because of its perceived failure to avert the multiple repercussions of the Asian financial crisis in 1997. But the subsequent prospects of a Community and a Charter reinvigorated interest in the Association. Since 2001, the grouping has been actively engaged by the major powers—the United States, China, Japan, and India. A number of countries, including the European Union (EU), have also signed or are negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) with the Association. Prior to the dramatic and, for ASEAN, embarrassing crisis that struck one of its members, Myanmar, in September–October 2007, one could argue that ASEAN's reputation had recovered and was improving, as it sought to refresh and ready itself for the future.

Especially since the events in Myanmar in 2007, it is advisable to tread carefully, avoiding unrealistic expectations that the ASC is bound to succeed, but also not joining the camp of those who dismiss such a venture as wholly beyond ASEAN's ability to realize.

Introduction

Politically unstable and almost on the verge of default in 1991, India's minority government was forced to introduce economic reforms under the supervision of the then Finance Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. The road has been treacherous and after about fifteen years the situation has radically changed. The economy, foreign exchange reserves, and energy demands are growing. However due to inherent limitations of coalition politics the successive governments have not been able to accelerate reforms in parliament. Coincidentally, Dr Manmohan Singh is Prime Minister of India since 2004. India, the home of over 1.1 billion people, has emerged as one of the economic giants in Asia in recent years.

India's Energy Policy is shaped by various ministries and departments such as Petroleum and Natural Gas, Power (State and Central), Coal, Atomic Energy Commission, New and Renewable Energy, Shipping and Transport, and Environment and the Planning Commission. The general observation is that these ministries and departments function quite independently, politically.

It is very time consuming for governments and organizations in Southeast Asia to deal with various ministries and departments. However, some would argue that knowing your niche area would help you deal directly with the respective ministry or department. Recently, the Prime Minister of India has formed a coordination committee to address these and related issues and to streamline policies, including investment policies, in various energy sectors.

Many experts have warned that unless India takes urgent measures for infrastructural developments, high economic growth is less likely to be sustainable in the long term. The energy sector is dominating infrastructural developments and one of the critical concerns for the government is the geopolitics of energy security. This chapter will focus on the geopolitics of energy in India and its implications for Southeast Asia.

ENERGY SECURITY

Energy security is understood and interpreted in different ways by planners, academics, and industries. According to R.S. Pathy, Energy Security deals with (a) guaranteeing fuel supplies at affordable prices;

In recent years there have been many occasions involving spats between Malaysia and Singapore ranging from water agreements to territorial disputes. At the moment it is not easy to deal with them, as facts and documents relating to those disputes are not accessible to the public, and thus they are better left for future scholars to deal with. The admission and later the separation of Singapore are useful in this respect as they will shed some insights over the occasional strained relations between the two sovereign nations.

A constitution of a country is the backbone which forms the foundation for her institutions and authority. It goes without saying that the constitution represents the interests, history, and needs of the people. Even in this modern democratic era where democracy stands at the very heart of a constitutional structure, the peculiarities and uniqueness of the society concerned are still playing the key role. Some of these peculiarities may even stand as the exceptions to democratic principles. There are various grounds of legitimacy to sustain these exceptions even though they may appear as anachronisms to outsiders. One of the grounds that is often cited is to rectify past mistakes or accidents of history, something which may be said of affirmative actions. Other examples include certain veto powers and privileges given to some people or institution. Some of the grounds for these are historical while some others may be cultural or even religious.

In Malaysia there are several provisions which may be said to be falling under the above category. These include provisions on the monarchy, the special position of the Malays, Islam, and language. Some have called these elements either indigenous or traditional.

Constitutional perspectives here refer to the idea contained in the provisions of the constitution. As a federation, Malaysia has a Constitution that consists of the Federal Constitution and the thirteen state constitutions.2 However, as the provisions are not always clear-cut on everything, reference has to made to case law; namely the decisions of the courts. In common law countries like Malaysia and Singapore, court decisions form part of the law. Constitutional perspective here also refers to the ideals of the constitution and these include democratic spirit, check and balances, limited government, and the like.

This book considers Malaysia-Singapore relations from a range of disciplinary perspectives. The chapters on history, politics, regional security, law, and economics collectively aim at a multidimensional study that seeks to convey the density and complexity of connections “across the Causeway”.

But this book also demonstrates the fact that the challenges of undertaking such a project are not confined to soliciting and assembling contributions from scholars in the field. The fraught legacy of historical entanglement, political union, and subsequent separation not only continues to cast a shadow over ongoing transactions and negotiations between the two countries, it also imposes burdens on scholars of Malaysia-Singapore relations. Politics is in part a matter of language, or to be more precise, loaded language. The Singaporean leadership's call for “meritocracy” was taken by the Malay leadership as an attack on the political entitlements of Malays. Lee Kuan Yew is often described as “assertive” and “temperamental”; economic success is said to have made Singaporeans “condescending” towards Malaysians. Accounts of what happened (or is happening) between Malaysia and Singapore — whether advanced by the political actors themselves or by witnesses or by those whose lives are affected by events and their consequences — thus encode standpoints and carry emotional overtones that may provoke positive or negative responses far in excess of their literal meanings. While scholarship strives to maintain critical distance from these accounts, it can only do so by working within, rather than outside of, language. If to write at all is to necessarily write from a position, then writing cannot completely insulate itself from the politics of language that shapes politics. Indeed, scholars of Malaysia-Singapore relations have sometimes found themselves implicated, by their own use of language, in the very debates and controversies that they claim only to examine.

In light of the contentiousness of some aspects of Malaysia-Singapore relations, Across the Causeway adopts a decidedly eclectic approach. Each section contains essays by Malaysian, Singaporean, and third-party scholars and highlights the heterogeneity of interpretations that underpin different disciplinary approaches to the issue.

The banning of a Singaporean Malay girl, Nurul Nasihah, in late February 2002 from attending school for wearing an Islamic headscarf in class raised protests not only from the Singaporean Muslim community, but also from the Malaysian Muslims. Although the Malaysian government distanced itself from the controversy, it did raise interest in the Malaysian newspapers and showed how sensitive the issue of religion and ethnicity really is, even if it occurs across the causeway. The ban is one of several measures undertaken by the Singaporean government that were post-September 11 aimed at integrating the three major ethnic groups there and promoting secularism in the republic. Furthermore, the arrest under the Internal Security Act (ISA) of Singapore's Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) members suspected of plotting massive attacks on the United States and its allies interest in the republic further raised speculation that the Singaporean government's intention to curb the rise of Muslim radicalism/terrorism in the republic was, in fact, against the Muslims.

The Malaysian government at the same time took several hard measures to contain the spread of Muslim radicalism in the country. The Mahathir administration decided to withdraw the annual grants received by the independent madrasah and several other independent Islamic schools known as the Sekolah Agama Rakyat (People's Religious School). These madrasah and independent Islamic schools received annual grants from the government through the state's Baitulmal (Alms Collection Agency) and Religious Affairs Department. The government blamed the madrasah and independent Islamic school for becoming centres of disaffection by instilling radical Islamic ideas that are not conducive to harmony in the multiracial society of Malaysia. Nonetheless, critics argued that the government's move was politically motivated since most of the madrasah schools affected have political inclination towards the opposition party, i.e. the Malaysia's Islamic Party or PAS. In addition, the Malaysian authorities also made several arrests of suspected members of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and other radical Muslim groups. They have been detained, like those in Singapore, under Malaysia's preventive law — the Internal Security Act (ISA).

ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

David Marshall was not one for half measures. Finding himself the president of the Labour Front, he now plunged furiously into trying to get the semblance of a party going. The constituent groups within the Front were fractious to begin with. Indeed, the Singapore Labour Party (SLP) pulled out of the Front in October 1954 after the list of candidates for the 1955 general elections was announced. Under the Rendel Constitution, the newly constituted Legislative Assembly would comprise 32 members, of whom 25 would be elected by popular ballot. David looked about him and realized that, though he was surrounded by a number of men who had some labour union experience, none of them had actually held any significant position in government or served in any significant capacity in the public service, save for Lim Yew Hock who had previously served on the Municipal Commission. David himself was nervous about his lack of political pedigree. He was anxious to galvanize his troops, equip them for battle, and win the war.

David turned to his old friend Malcolm MacDonald — Britain's Commissioner for Southeast Asia — for help. MacDonald, who himself came from an illustrious political family and whose father, Ramsay MacDonald, had twice been prime minister of Britain, suggested that the Front should bring someone out from the British Labour Party to be full-time organizing secretary. This suggestion did not go down well with David's colleagues in the Front and was abandoned. David decided that he would have to take matters into his own hands and get himself a political education. He decided to spend four months in early 1955 learning the ropes at Transport House — headquarters of the British Labour Party in London — all at his own expense.

In the meantime, a delegation of British Labour members of parliament was scheduled to visit Singapore on 7 August, 1954. At 7:15 p.m., David went to Kallang Airport to receive the group that included Aneurin Bevan, Edith Summerskill, Morgan Phillips, Ernest Earnshaw, Burke, and Franklin. That night, he took both Earnshaw and Phillips to the Raffles Hotel for drinks and found them both solid but unimpressive. The next day, he hosted the group for lunch and was suitably impressed by Edith Summerskill and Morgan Phillips.

Current relations between Singapore and Malaysia were significantly shaped by the legacy of merger and separation. A review of this period indicates not only the importance of political leadership, but also, more fundamentally, the importance of communalism. These twin factors infused tensions into political and economic issues.

The creation of the Federation of Malaysia was precipitated by Singapore's shift from colonial status to internal self-government (June 1959) and eventual independence. The People's Action Party (PAP) won the general elections in May 1959 and its leader, Lee Kuan Yew, became prime minister. In May 1961, Tunku Abdul Rahman mooted the idea of an eventual merger between Malaya, Singapore, and the British Borneo territories. Lee Kuan Yew favoured independence through merger with Malaya and rejected the idea of an independent Singapore because it would become “South-East Asia's Israel with every hand turned against it.”

The PAP successfully won a referendum on the future of Singapore conducted in September 1962. Seventy-one per cent of the voters supported merger. But domestic opposition by communists, with support in the Chinese community, kept Lee under constant pressure to demonstrate in merger negotiations that he was standing up for the island republic's interests. Lee sought and gained special terms including greater autonomy and diminished financial obligations for Singapore. Singapore became independent on 1 September 1963, and then joined the Federation of Malaysia a fortnight later.

The political leaders in Singapore and Malaysia shared the objective of defeating the challenge posed by ethnic Chinese communism. And they both favoured creating a Federation of Malaysia. But they also had differing political motivations. Malaya's leaders sought to incorporate Singapore into a larger federation in which Malay dominance would be maintained. Lee Kuan Yew and the People's Action Party (PAP) sought independence through merger with Malaya, but on terms of equality for all communal (read ethnic Chinese) groups. Lee strongly argued in favour of meritocracy and this was perceived by the Malay leadership as a veiled attack on the political entitlements of indigenous Malays.

Once Singapore joined the Federation, a major fault line quickly developed between the incumbent federal Alliance government led by Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, and the PAP under the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew. At issue were personal ambitions, economic questions, communalism, political ideology, and the question of federal power and state autonomy.

RUMBLINGS OF WAR

Japan long had expansionist designs on the territories of Southeast Asia. Plans to invade the Southeast Asia were drawn up as early as the beginning of the twentieth century. However, the Japanese are patient and methodical people. Much time was spent planting spies and intelligence personnel throughout the region in the guise of petty businessmen, shopkeepers, photographers, and even doctors and dentists. Japanese spies were planted throughout the Malayan peninsula and Singapore. Singapore had always had a small Japanese population, many of whom lived in “Little Japan” in the Middle Road area. Japan's military efforts had, since the late 1920s, been concentrated in China. In 1931, it invaded China and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. In 1937, following the Marco Polo Bridge incident, Japan launched the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The British Government and the European community were blasé about these developments. Confident that once the Singapore Naval Base was complete the Japanese would be kept at bay, British strategists and politicians made a series of fatal mistakes and errors of judgement that would lead ultimately to the fall of Singapore in February 1942. The local community, especially the Chinese, took the Japanese threat more seriously. In 1937, following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, local business leaders, led by the formidable Tan Kah Kee, established the Singapore China Relief Fund. A year later, Tan also set up the South Seas China Relief Fund Union. In 1939, at the request of the Chinese Government, Chinese volunteers from Nanyang (Southeast Asia) were recruited as mechanics and drivers to help transport supplies to China across the Burma Road. This was necessary as many of China's ports had been blockaded by the Japanese. These efforts and activities sensitized large segments of the Chinese community to the imminent threat of Tokyo.

Astute observers of the international situation such as David were becoming increasingly concerned. But the British ruling classes were intoxicated by their own propaganda and luxuriated in their halcyon existence. It was not a question of whether the Japanese would attack, but what could be done to fend them off when that eventuality came to pass.

JOINING THE VOLUNTEER FORCE

In 1854, in response to the Hokkien-Teochew riots, Singapore's European community had initiated the Singapore Volunteer Rifle Corps as an internal security force.

AT THE FORT

In September 1934, David arrived in London — capital city of United Kingdom and fort of the British Empire. He had spent the last four years preparing for his assault on the citadels of domination and power and he was going to succeed, come what may. The London into which he stepped in 1934 was not the glittering, glistening, modern metropolis one would have expected. Certainly, all the trappings of power were there in their full glory — the Palace of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Whitehall, and the Old Bailey — but everything was just a lot greyer, grimier, and grimmer than depicted in history books and travel guides.

The tail-end effects of the Great Depression were still being felt in many quarters and life for the average English family was tough. The city itself was experiencing unprecedented growth, surpassing the eight million mark when David arrived. Indeed, London's population would reach an all-time high in 1939 at 8.9 million. This was fuelled in part by traditional migration from the English countryside and in part by the many Jews who were fleeing Germany and other European cities in the wake of growing anti-Semitism and the rise of Hitler's Third Reich. The trappings of modernity — trams, the London underground, railways — were much in evidence, but there was massive unemployment in the capital. Even women had to go out to find work to supplement the family income; something previously unheard of. London's East End became a ghetto and a hotbed of extreme political ideas, epitomized by the Communist Party of Great Britain at one end of the spectrum and the British Union of Fascists at the other.

The city centre was very congested and lodgings were in short supply. These shortages, coupled with Londoners' preference for a more “rural” lifestyle, led to the city sprawling beyond the County of London into the neighbouring counties of Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Middlesex, and Surrey. Urban dwellings were typically terraced houses or low-rise, walk-up flats built in and around a large grid. Working-class dwellings were affordable, costing between eight and twelve shillings a week, depending on the location and what floor the lodging was on. Running water was available but there was no hot water or electricity.

BACK IN SINGAPORE

In the years David was away, Singapore underwent more changes. The island was untouched by the First World War, save that German residents were interned and German ships were seized. For the ordinary inhabitant of Singapore, the most significant and dramatic event in these years was the Indian Mutiny of 1915. Distressed by the fact that Britain was at war with Turkey, the Light Infantry — consisting solely of Punjabi Muslims — revolted, killed their officers, and seized control of Alexandra Barracks, where the Germans had been detained. They released the German prisoners (since Germany was an ally of Turkey) and proceeded to kill any European they met. The Mutiny was put down within a couple of weeks — 36 mutineers were shot, 77 transported, and 12 imprisoned. Kassim Mansoor, the man who had incited the mutiny, was hanged rather than shot as he was a civilian coffee-shop owner.

When the Marshal entourage returned to Singapore, Saul had already moved the family to a shophouse in Adis Road, a stone's throw away from where David had been born. Adis Road was considered a higher class area than Middle Road or Selegie Road. At the end of the row of shophouses where the Mashals lived was a huge grand residence — Eu Villa, the palatial home of Eu Tong Sen. Eu had made a fortune in traditional Chinese medical products through his flagship company, Eu Yan Sang, and was reputedly one of the richest men in Singapore. Even with the move to Adis Road, the Mashals were still within walking distance of the Maghain Aboth Synagogue and this was very important to Flora.

Flora Mashal was a stickler for ritual and made her family observe a large number of rules in this connection. Her religious fervour was early in evidence — she had travelled to Singapore from Baghdad with her own shokhet or ritual slaughterer so that all the meat she ate met with the Torah's tenets. The presence of the shokhet also enabled Flora to run a kosher kitchen. On the Shabbat or Sabbath, all work was forbidden.

Singapore's separation from Malaysia in August 1965 after fewer than 23 months in the Federation has generated much interest — and controversy — in its wake. Explanations of why “merger” failed, and the issues and circumstances that have contributed to the island's “eviction” from Malaysia have since engaged academic analysis and debate — as well as inspired competing interpretations from political leaders and opinion shapers on both sides of the Causeway. Wang Gungwu's remarks, made in the 1966 annual of the Straits Times, that “it will be some time before we have the objectivity and the perspective to find an answer that we can all agree and accept” still appear very much relevant when set against the sharp reaction across the Causeway to the publication in 1998 of The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, which offered the then Singapore's Senior Minister's personal perspective of Singapore's separation from Malaysia. For Singapore, however, the emotional trauma and crisis of the separation, represented by its Prime Minister's teary “moment of anguish” on national television on 9 August 1965, was arguably a significant political “defining moment” in the making of the young Singapore “nation”. Indeed, as the then Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was to declare during the launch of National Education thirty-two years later in 1997, the “issues which led to separation were fundamental, and remain so today”. Because Singapore stood firm in Malaysia over these fundamental issues, he said, “we suddenly found ourselves out on our own as an independent country, with few means to make a living or defend ourselves”. What were these “fundamental issues” that made political accommodation with the Federation government seemingly impossible — and how significant were they in contributing to the island's sudden and unexpected withdrawal from the Malaysian Federation? Previous attempts to answer such questions were frequently hampered by the closure of the archives on the subject, and scholars had to rely almost exclusively on published public sources. But the recent opening of archives in Britain, Australia, United States, and Singapore, amongst others, and the greater willingness of key players, including the then Singapore Senior Minister, to discuss the previously “sensitive” subject in their writings, have permitted not only a more comprehensive study of the subject than was previously possible, but also an exploration of the meanings of “separation” for the island state.

BACK IN THE LAW

David had returned to legal practice soon after he resigned as chief minister. In November 1956, he was back at his old firm of Battenberg & Talma. It is not known under what terms he returned to the firm, but a partly decipherable entry in his diary in January 1957 suggests that he was ready to branch out on his own. By the middle of 1957, he had established his own firm, David Marshall & Co. at the Bank of China Building. Initially, David operated as a sole practitioner. In 1959, he took on Leo Anthony Joseph (L.A.J.) Smith as partner and the firm became Marshall & Smith. Smith was a tall, fiery Englishman with a bald pate who had been called to Singapore Bar in 1948. At the Bar, Smith had a reputation as a “brainy” lawyer whose command of every case was backed by a thorough knowledge of the law. This partnership did not last long. By 1960, Smith had left and David took on another partner, Chung Kok Soon (better known as K.S. Chung), who had been called to the Bar just eight years before. Chung was the son of Chung Thye Phin, last kapitan of Perak. A very capable civil lawyer, Chung stayed with David for two years before striking out on his own. From 1962 onwards, the firm was David Marshall & Co. and remained thus until David retired from active practice in 1978.

Towards the end of his legal career, David took on two partners, Amarjeet Singh and Mohideen P.H. Rubin, but the firm remained David Marshall & Co. Amarjeet Singh — who was from the first graduating class of the Law Faculty at the University of Malaya in Singapore — joined David as a legal assistant in 1969 following a short career in the Legal Service where he had been magistrate and district judge. He had heard from another criminal lawyer, R. Ramason, that David was looking for assistants interested in criminal practice. Amarjeet applied and was taken on as an assistant or, in Amarjeet's words, David's “kaki-tangan man”. In 1971, David offered him a partnership and he remained in the firm until David retired. Mohideen Rubin became a pupil with David shortly after he graduated in 1966, but interrupted his pupillage to take up an executive position in The Straits Times.

HAIL DAVID

On 12 March, 1908, a baby boy was born to Saul and Flora Mashal at their home on the island of Singapore. They named him David, after the biblical king of the Jews. Unbeknownst to them, his life would parallel and resonate with that of the legendary king in many ways in the years to come. The Mashals lived on the second storey of a small shophouse at 81, Selegie Road, at the junction of Selegie Road and Sophia Road, in the middle of Singapore's Jewish quarter, referred to as the mahallah by the Arabspeaking Jews. Below them was a shop selling Chinese coffins. The Mashals celebrated the arrival of their first-born son. Flora was especially pleased. The year before, she had given birth to their first child, a daughter named Rachel. Saul and Flora had been in the British colony of Singapore for just eight years and things were looking up for them.

Saul had arrived in Singapore in 1900. Unlike so many of his fellow sojourners, Saul was not in Singapore to seek his fortune but to recover his health, having been diagnosed with jaundice. Two years previously, in 1898, he had married Flora — born Mariam Farha Khan — only child of Khan and Ha'cohen. The young Saul arrived in Singapore during Ramadan — the holy Muslim month of fasting — and noticed that local Muslims did not have any dates with which to break their fast, as was the tradition in Baghdad. Born into a family of traders and dyers, Saul smelt an opportunity here and began importing dried dates from the Middle East. Soon he set up an office in Change Alley, leading off Singapore's business centre, Raffles Place. Business was good and Saul decided to settle in Singapore. Once settled in, he sent for his young bride in Baghdad.

FROM BAGHDAD TO SINGAPORE

Today, the Jews constitute the smallest ethnic community in Singapore. Even at its height, just before the onset of World War II in Europe, the total number of Jews in Singapore numbered no more than 2,000. Most Jews in Singapore came from Baghdad, in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). Jews had lived in Mesopotamia for close to 3,000 years and Baghdad had long been one of the most important centres of Jewry in the Middle East.5 In 1910, Baghdad had a huge Jewish population.

Geographically and historically Malaysia and Singapore are a single entity. However, political interests and priorities cast them asunder into two separate, and even antagonizing, entities. Political agendas and considerations severed the social, economic, cultural, and historical relations between these two nation states.

UNITY IN GEOGRAPHY

The Federation of Malaysia is a political entity of a nation-state created in 1963 that comprised West or Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia. West Malaysia consists of the Malay Peninsula with nine Malay sultanates (Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, and Johor), Penang and Melaka, and the Federal Territory in which is located the capital city of Kuala Lumpur. (Putrajaya, situated some 40 kilometres from Kuala Lumpur is the newly established administrative centre of the country). East Malaysia comprised the Bornean states of Sabah (North Borneo before 1963) and Sarawak and the Federal Territory of Labuan, an island off the southwest coast of Sabah. The Republic of Singapore that came into being in 1965 is located off the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia. The narrow Tebrau Strait or Straits of Johor separates the island republic from the peninsula mainland. A causeway and a bridge link Singapore to West Malaysia.

Geographically, it is visibly apparent that Singapore is a natural appendage to Peninsular Malaysia in geological and physical terms. The island in past geological times was in all probability a part of the peninsula and represents a breakaway from its tip. In close proximity to the equator (between latitudes 2° and 6° North), Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia share an all-year-round hot, wet and humid equatorial climate, as well as similar flora and fauna. Average temperatures range from 25° to 35° C with highland areas enjoying cooler conditions. Annual precipitation is between 2000 and 4000 millimetres. Both Peninsular Malaysia and island Singapore are in the monsoon zone, with the northeast monsoon blowing from the South China Sea and bringing higher rainfall from November to January to the eastern shores. From June to October the southwest monsoon is dominant, but it is not as wet hence there is lesser precipitation during this period.

THE LAW IS A JEALOUS MISTRESS

Although David had always wanted to be a doctor, it was law that was his true calling. In the few years he had practised law before the Japanese Occupation, it had already rewarded him with an interesting career and a social standing that enabled him to do what he enjoyed most: to serve others.

David returned to Singapore in February 1946 and immediately rejoined his old firm of Allen & Gledhill. For a short while, only William Munro and David ran the firm. By the latter part of 1947, all the firm's other partners had returned and David continued as legal assistant. The post-war rehabilitation and reconstruction brought along with it an economic recovery that guaranteed much work for the lawyers. It was not long before David started taking on news worthy cases.

One of the first cases David handled in 1946 gave him news exposure. It was heard before District Judge and First Magistrate Paul Storr, who in 1948 became puisne judge in Malaya. The case concerned the ownership of a steamer. The question before the court was the meaning of “ownership” under section 328 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1894. David argued that the king of England was not specifically included in the categories of owners mentioned in the Act, which included “any naturalised British subject”. In response to Storr's question whether or not the king could be a British subject, David replied that as sovereign he was not. Storr persisted:

David knew he was stumped and backed down:

Even though David was to become Singapore's greatest criminal lawyer in the years to come, he did not start out specializing in criminal law, especially after the Japanese Occupation. Indeed, a quick look at his early cases shows that many of them were in fact marine collision cases. The collision of the Bentong was another case that hit the headlines. The 957-ton rice ship collided with a submerged object while on the way to Singapore from Bangkok. The ship's principal officers were charged with negligence.