Johor giving up sovereignty to Singapore?

MALAYSIA: It seems that the size of Singapore may be getting bigger. No, not by way of more land reclaim but because Johor may be "giving" Singapore a piece of their land to be located in the Johor Baharu city centre and the Second Malaysia-Singapore Link. The plan is that these areas, termed Free Access Zones (FAZ) will enable foreigners to stay and work there without the need for travel documents. The aim was reported to increase tourism in Johor and to promote the South Johor Economic Region (SJER). The idea was mooted by Kazanah Nasional Bhd. Of course nothing is finalised, and I suspect it will never be.

Whoever comes up with this idea is probably too desperate to boost tourism in Johor, to the extend that he is willing to "surrender" a piece of Malaysia's sovereign to another country. By opening up Johor unilaterally to enable foreigners (in this case, for all intend and purposes, Singaporeans) to live and work without travel documents, is as good as giving up land to Singapore. Tun Mahathir will flip. He is already on a war path with Badawi because the current PM had cancelled the building of the Scenic Bridge, a bridge Tun Mahathir said will be build even without the need for Singapore's agreement. Furthermore, if the sale of sand to Singapore had been equated with selling Malaysia's sovereignty to Singapore, even when this was strictly a business transactions, allowing Singaporeans to live and work in Johor without the need for travel documents surely is tantamout to "surrendering" the sovereign.

Sovereignty aside, there is the problem of logistics. How is the Johor government going to delineate the FAZ? Currently there are numerous roads in and out of Johor Bahru city centre. If indeed the city centre is made FAZ, how to regulate the flow of Singaporeans beyond the FAZ? It is definitely not possible to build immigration point at all exit point. The most likely way is to revamp the traffic flow which will mean major redevelopment of Johor Bahru city itself. This is highly unlikely given that the building of the new administrative city of Nusa Jaya is underway as well as the cost involved.

Even if the exit points can be easily controlled, there is the question of inconvenience to the local populations. They will essentially be living in no-man's-land because they still have to show prove that they are Malaysians when they exit the FAZ and on entering Singapore! Surely this is highly unacceptable.

I find this idea of FAZ is ludicrious. How can any government even think of "surrounding" it land to another country? It only shows how incompetent our policy makers are. They usually tried to score points by saying anything that comes to their mind without giving it too much thought. They are not afraid of being penalised because Malaysia simply lack the culture of accountability. Just say anything you like, if it is not feasible then just forget about it, no harm done. Unfortunately, by coming up with such ludicrious ideas, Malaysia will become the laughing stock. Or may be Kazanah was thinking of a new icon for Malaysia - the Wall of Johor Bahru!