Small Nation and the Second Hand Smoke

The haze serve to remind us that we can be easily affected by the action (or in action) of our neighboring countries. That the reason we have ASEAN to iron out regional issue in a thoughtful, gentleman and mature manner in achieving a WIN-WIN for all. Rather than one tactless minister resorting to accusing Singaporean of "Acting Like A Child". This minister do the entire ASEAN community no good with such comments as a representative from Indonesia. Is he under the Indonesian government payroll or some Palm Oil Companies left and right pocket? Yet on another side of the court, we have another mini-star firing off his rhetoric salvo forgetting this is not a local Opposition party handling some Hawker Center issues.

The Silver lining in this very hazy war of politics and diplomacy is the objective approach of Indonesian Foreign Minister to refocus the attention on fighting the forest fire and the assuring appearance of our PM on TV to inform our citizen the way ahead to tackle both the haze as well as health issues of the people.

Hope it paves the way to 1) Get ride of the fire and thus the haze 2)Prevent occurrence by persecuting errand Companies as well as help equip poorer farmers with alternative means of forest clearing or even a staggered slash and burn schedule to reduce number of hot spot at any time.

Half a million or 1 million dollar is not enough to solve the problem when the money lands in the wrong hands. We rather keep in in our nation reserve at the moment.