Secret Origins Of The Little Red Dot

The term "little red dot" gained currency after former Indonesian President B.J. Habibie put down Singapore in an article published in the Asian Wall Street Journal of 4 August 1998. It quoted Habibie's remark that he did not have the feeling Singapore was a friend, and had him pointing to a wall map, saying: "It's O.K. with me, but there are 211 million people (in Indonesia). All the green (area) is Indonesia. And that red dot is Singapore."

Ex-Foreign Minister George Yeo put on this spin during the launch of a book bearing the same sobriquet, "When President Habibie dismissed us as a little red dot, he was expressing his frustration at our refusal to do his bidding."


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The hard truth is that Habibie was piqued because Lee Kuan Yew had voiced aloud that the Indonesia rupiah would fall if Habibie became President. BJ Habibie was appointed the third President of Indonesia under section 8 of the 1945 Constitution after Suharto was forced to retire in May 1988 from the post which he had held for 32 years, under a hazy cloud of corruption, cronyism and nepotism.

When Indonesian Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Agung Laksono bristled with contempt, "Singapore shouldn't be like children, (behaving) in such a tizzy" ("Singapura jangan seperti anak-anak, dalam kegelisahan seperti ini."), PM Lee's said it would not be "fruitful" to respond, choosing instead to "work towards solving the problem rather than exchanging harsh words." It sounded like an emasculated echo of Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa's own tough words on the issue, “The approach must be one of collaboration and partnership, not one of apportioning blame here and there. Let’s focus on putting the fires out.”

After the fires have died down and the haze dissipated, historians will try to trace the origins of the exchange of "harsh words". One plausible source of the combustibles has to be traceable to this Facebook post:
"This is now the worst haze that Singapore has ever faced. And no country or corporation has the right to pollute the air at the expense of Singaporeans' health and wellbeing."