Sunday, August 06, 2017

Acting for a foreign country to influence our foreign policy

I am quite puzzled about this accusation that the Prof Huang Jing is "acting for a foreign country to influence our foreign policy". (Disclaimer: I do not know Prof Huang Jing).

We need various sources of reliable information to conduct our foreign policy.

Our ambassadors are based in foreign countries and they have to talk to leaders and influential people (including think tanks) in those countries and convey their views to our government.

They also have to convey our government's views to these leaders and influential people, and get them to be on our side, i.e. to influence their foreign policy in our favor.

Similarly, the ambassadors of other countries based in Singapore have to contact our leaders and influential people. They will also have to convey the views of their government to our leaders and influential people and get our people to understand and be supportive of their foreign policy.

All these activities are part of diplomacy and should be treated as normally acceptable activities.

When our influential people get the feedback, they should pass them to our government leaders. It is the job of the government and foreign minister to decide on foreign policy after getting these feedbacks.

Surely our foreign minister is able to handle and evaluate the feedback? Surely Prof Huang is doing his job to provide the feedback to our government? Surely all feedback is meant to influence our foreign policy?

What did Prof Huang did wrong?


1 comment:

  1. You have bothered to put up a mature and sensible analysis . The prof could be a pushy person only and for that he gets punished while many others sources of feedback are not.

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