Dual Faced Citizenship

See, our passport also red one.

It was something denied to Singaporeans despite years of clamour for dual citizenship. Even Americans who have taken up citizenship here have been reminded by the Immigration & Checkpoint Authority (ICA) to surrender their USA passport. Current regulations reflect the longstanding policy of the U.S. Department of State that no person should be in possession of more than one valid, or potentially valid, passport at any one time.

Yet prime minister Lee Hsien Loong as good as collected a Korean passport when Seoul city's mayor Park Won-soon awarded him an honorary citizenship on Thursday morning (Dec 11). And it's not the first time either. Earlier this year, apparently he received another foreign passport in London on the quiet.

When Lee Kuan Yew was presented with the Order of Honour in January by Leonid Moiseev, Russia's Ambassador to Singapore, it wasn't clear if citizenship was part of the package. But there was definitely a red passport in the press photo, next to the bluish medal first conferred on Lee by Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 10 last year in conjunction with the old geezer's 90th birthday.

Only a few days ago, PM Lee said that the next General Election will be a “deadly serious fight”. It's starting to look more serious than we can imagine. Can a Korean citizen be elected prime minister of Singapore?

Mahathir was really miffed when he learnt that Putrajaya had appointed German national Christoph Mueller as CEO-designate of Malaysia Airlines under its restructuring plan.  Dripping with sarcasm, he told Malaysiakini, "I am worried, if we do not believe in ourselves, one day when we need a prime minister, we can get a white man because he is 'smarter' than us."

That's the difference between Malaysia and Singapore.