The Jakarta Post

Jokowi, Lee seek to boost Indonesia-Singapore ties

Meeting postponed for past two years due to pandemic

Dian Septiari and Fadli

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will finally meet in Bintan, Riau Islands, on Tuesday for their annual retreat that had been paused for the past two years due to the pandemic.

The two leaders are expected to pick up on various bilateral issues from their last meeting in Singapore in October 2019, just a few months before the coronavirus began spreading from Wuhan, China in early 2020.

Jokowi was supposed to take his turn to host his Singaporean counterpart in 2020 and, after several postponements, they will finally be able to meet this week on the resort island located just one hour by ferry from Singapore.

Singapore has already opened its borders to vaccinated Indonesians since November last year, with Indonesia set to do a trial run on opening Bintan and Batam to Singaporean tourists, despite rising COVID-19 infections in the city-state.

The Foreign Ministry’s director for Southeast Asian affairs Mirza Nurhidayat said the government was finalizing talks on various strategic issues.

“As close neighbors, we are focusing on how to improve relations in all areas, including how the two countries can cooperate in the health sector since Singapore is also going through the pandemic,” he told reporters in a recent briefing.

Riau Islands Governor Ansar Ahmad expressed hopes that the meeting in Natra Bintan, a resort on Bintan Island, would boost tourism in his region. “We have asked that there should be a special policy for Riau Islands,” he said.

International relations expert Teuku Rezasyah from Padjadjaran University said without transboundary haze pollution and any cases of maid abuse, the temperature in Indonesia and Singapore relations was relatively warm.

“Singapore has also remained Indonesia’s biggest investor for years, which indicates trust in Indonesia’s stability,” he said.

The two countries’ economic ties were strengthened when their bilateral investment treaty entered into force last year.

Officials from both sides have since tried to resolve outstanding strategic issues, including airspace management, military training and extradition arrangements more carefully, Rezasyah added.

“Singapore wanted to combine them as one package, but for us those are separate issues,” he said.

At their last retreat, Jokowi and Lee had finally agreed on a framework to negotiate the management of the flight information region (FIR) above Riau Islands.

An FIR is a specified region of airspace in which flight information and alert services (ALRS) are provided. FIRs above Batam, Tanjung Pinang, Karimun and some parts of Natuna Islands are controlled by Singapore’s Changi Airport.

“[On the FIR talks] both sides are continuing negotiations and discussions so that an agreement can be reached,” Mirza of the Foreign Ministry said.

Indonesia has been trying to take over the control of the airspace since the 1990s, but the Singaporean side insisted that talks on the airspace management should be discussed “separately but concurrently” with the military training area agreement.

Indonesian officials have said efforts to take over control of FIRs had nothing to do with sovereignty but it was rather a matter of traffic management, in line with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) constitution, which allows delegation of air navigation to another country and with no derogation of sovereignty.

However, the arrangement with Singapore, a legacy from 1946 when Singapore was still under British control, deprives Indonesia of authority over the airspace. As a consequence, patrols conducted by the Air Force and Navy in the territory must also seek guidance from Singapore.

Military analyst Connie Rahakundini Bakrie said it was in Indonesia’s national interest to secure FIR management from Singapore. This, she said, should be pursued along with efforts to keep a strategic orbital slot at 123 degrees east longitude under Indonesia’s management, even though it has nothing to do with Singapore, in order to keep the Indonesian Military free from surveillance and interception.

“I think we are ready and capable to take over the FIR, but we have bigger problems if we lose the 123 degrees east longitude slot because we could still be intercepted by foreign actors,” she said.

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2022-01-24T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-01-24T08:00:00.0000000Z

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