Sovereignty & The Art of Building Latrine Toilets

A minister told him the Island was Temasik.He then left Riau and as he landed upon the island, he sighted a strange looking animal. The accompanying minister explained to him that the animal was probably a lion and Sang Nila Utama named the island as Singapura – singa means lion and pura means city. Much Later, the island belonged to the Sultanate of Johore until somebody by the name of Sultan Hussein decided to relinquished its ownership to Stamford Raffles, who rewrote history to become the founder of Singapore.
Of course we regained the island when Singapore became a part of Federation of Malaysia. But then due to political differences and etc, our first Prime Minister acted on his own relinquished our ownership of the island in 1965, and probably for good. At that time, we just thought about politics and no one talked about sovereignty.
Thus, if you were to look at the physical map of the Republic of Singapore, you would be able to see most physical features are named after some Malay words except the tiny rocky islands which the Malays who settled on the main and around the island of Temasik (later Singapura), from all over Malay Archipelago considered as not fit for any human purpose.
Apart from all the inhibited satellite islands, there is one which is called Pulau Batu Putih. Since the island is the size of a soccer field no one bothered to live there. But back in 1851 the British decided to erect a lighthouse on that island in view of the increased merchant shipping activities. It went on and on for a century without anyone talked about the sovereignty except in 1953 when, in response to the query of the Singapore Colonial Government, the Office of the Johor State Secretery, denied any claim on the ownership.
Finally here we were, in most recent time, disputing on the sovereignty of that tiny uninhibited island. But, as we all knew, Singapore is awarded the Pulau Batu Putih measuring the size of a soccer field while Malaysia is awarded the Middle Rocks.
Imagine having sovereignty over two clusters of rocks 250 meter apart with a varying height above sea level from 0.6 meter to 1.2 meters, depending on the tides.
Naturally we can’t build anything on this new sovereign land of ours since its surface area is smaller than the backyard of a small terrace house. But since we have spent so much money to gather the so-called the best legal brains in The Hague, maybe we ought to optimize it by building a maritime free-fall latrine toilet to be utilized by our fishermen or even by members of our maritime authorities.
It is time we show some real activities there before someone else claims ownership and sovereignty over this millions-ringgit rocky island. And of course this is also to ensure that our “win-win” situation, as our ministers (the Prime Minister included) have put it, lives up to the expectation of such word.