Transcript of Doorstop Interview by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 15 July 2026

Question 1: What are the key takeaways from your trip, and from your meetings with the Agong and other Malaysian leaders? Can you also comment on the state of bilateral ties?

Question 2: Looking ahead to a more polarised world, where do you think the Singapore and Malaysia relationship will face its deepest tests, and what is key to ensure both countries emerge stronger from them?

Question 3: Singapore and Malaysia are bound by deep historical, linguistic, and cultural roots. How can we better celebrate and preserve this shared heritage, and how important are these deep-seated community bonds in keeping our bilateral relationship resilient?

Question 4: SM Lee had earlier visited Terengganu and Pahang, and your visit this time round includes engagements in Selangor. Is Singapore stepping up its partnerships with Malaysian states, and how does this complement our ties with the federal government?

Question 5: Based on your interactions with Singaporeans living and working in Malaysia, what is your greatest hope for the future of our relationship with our close neighbour?

President Tharman Shanmugaratnam: I’ve had a very productive State Visit. I would like to thank His Majesty Sultan Ibrahim and Her Majesty Raja Zarith Sofiah for the warmth they accorded me and my wife. I had very good meetings across the board – with Their Majesties, with the Prime Minister, with the Sultan of Selangor, as well as the Menteri Besar of Selangor, and a range of business leaders. It amounted to a good meeting of minds on bilateral cooperation, on ASEAN, as well as on international issues.

This is a State Visit, but it also continues our high-level visits to Malaysia: Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s visit for an informal buka puasa with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim earlier in the year, and Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s recent visit to Pahang and Terengganu. These visits are not just matters of form, and my Stage Visit is not just about reciprocating the previous visit by Sultan Ibrahim as King of Malaysia. We each take a personal interest in the bilateral relationship between Singapore and Malaysia – wanting to understand each other’s thinking and to push cooperation along where possible. Leaders on both sides are investing a lot in this relationship.

Bilaterally, we are strengthening our economic complementarity. It is already a deep relationship, but we are maturing that complementarity. It is no secret that, in linking up more with Johor for instance – through the Special Economic Zone and the RTS Link – there will be some businesses in Singapore who lose out – some service industries will lose out. But others will gain, and on the whole, both countries will be winners. We have to accept that, with the larger win, there will be some losses. And that is a mature way of thinking about the bilateral relationship, on both sides.

Importantly, too, both Singapore and Malaysia are leaning forward on ASEAN matters. ASEAN has the potential to unleash a lot more economic value. We are not there yet, but we have significant potential in ASEAN.

It is not just about the traditional ways of strengthening the internal ASEAN market. ASEAN can be a green energy powerhouse, and a powerhouse for processing power, if you look at the potential data centre capacity. In fact, those two initiatives go together, with green energy being needed to power data centres in Malaysia. And ASEAN still has a lot of potential in its digital economy.

We are really raising our level of ambition on ASEAN, and Malaysia and Singapore think alike in that regard. It is in the national interests of each ASEAN member state that we join forces on green energy, in processing power, and in the digital economy. It adds up to making ASEAN’s value proposition that much stronger in a world that is getting more fragmented. So we have very similar thinking on ASEAN, and Malaysia is keen to work closely with Singapore on regional initiatives as we take on the chairmanship of ASEAN next year

We also think alike on international issues. Very importantly, we think alike on the Straits of Malacca and Singapore: we agreed on the criticality of abiding by UNCLOS, the law of the sea that ensures safe transit through a strait used for international navigation strait, without tolls or fees. We are also keen to promote the way in which the Straits of Malacca and Singapore is managed cooperatively by the three littoral states, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, and how we work together with user states as well as the industry, not by charging tolls or fees, but through voluntary contributions to support the safety of navigation and environmental protection. It has worked well and is example of how littoral states can manage international waterways in ways that are win-win for all users and, importantly, abide by the law of the sea. We have very similar thinking on that.

We also think likewise on opening up markets for global trade and investment. Both Singapore and Malaysia are export-oriented. We have always benefited, and our people have benefited, from being plugged into global markets. About a quarter of global trade passes through ASEAN.

In a world that’s becoming more divided, we are also very keen to diversify our trading links, individually and as a region, and to avoid at all costs being forced by geopolitics into either a US-led bloc or a China-led bloc. We have to engage with each of the major powers, and grow our links with other regions of the world. Malaysia’s and Singapore’s thinking is very much alike in that regard.

On the question about our relationship with the Malaysian states. We want to gain a good understanding of each state’s priorities and the thinking of its leaders. That’s in fact complementary with Singapore’s relationship between the Federal government.

It has always been that way. I remember vividly  accompanying Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew to Malaysia in 2009. It’s worth remembering that he visited Kuala Lumpur, Perak, Pahang, Penang and Kelantan – don’t forget that Penang and Kelantan were under opposition governments. We have to keep that up – understanding the thinking and priorities in each state, and finding things we can do together across the span of the peninsula and East Malaysia. It is complementary to the broader relationship between the two governments, and helps ensure that the relationship between the two countries is robust, and that we understand each other well across the board and do not have misconceptions.

I had a very useful audience with His Royal Highness Sultan Sharafuddin, Sultan of Selangor, together with the Raja Muda and the Sultan’s senior advisors.  We had a lengthy meeting in fact. They take  a real interest in developments in Singapore: how we developed our ITE, for instance, and how we gradually changed the mindset of parents towards skill-based, vocational education. They are keen to see what they can borrow from our experience, not just the experience of the Europeans and others, but the Singapore experience. They take interest in how we cleaned up the Singapore River, which took many years – how we went about controlling industries, the construction companies and everyone who had previously been  polluting the river. They also take an interest in our efforts in flood mitigation, including how we dealt with the problems of water run-off in new developments in the city. They are interested in these everyday issues that affect people’s quality of life, and the larger issues of climate adaptation and environmental sustainability that we can learn from each other on.

Likewise, I had a very constructive meeting with Selangor Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari. We discussed very similar issues. He had just had productive visit to Singapore as an S R Nathan Fellow, during which he met many of our agencies. He is also keen to advance the economic relationship, including how we can collaborate on growing the start-up ecosystem. Our larger companies have many investments in Selangor – most recently, SIA Engineering has set up a centre for aircraft maintenance and repair operations (MRO) in Subang, and continue to look for opportunities there.

Finally, on the question of what I hope for in the relationship between Singapore and Malaysia for future. If we take a long view, I would say that there is more we have to do to bring our youth together in a more sustained way, and to deepen cultural exchanges.

We already have active programmes involving our youth leaders. There is an annual Singapore-Malaysia Youth Leaders’ Exchange Programme – not a very long duration each time, but useful. We also have a programme, supported by Temasek Foundation, in which students from Malaysian universities participate in summer programmes at NUS and NTU. We cannot recreate what it was like in the old days – when young people literally grew up together, went to the same schools, and had family moving up and down the peninsular. But I think we can find a way to enable more prolonged immersion, so you get the natural development of friendships among our students. It does not need to be across the board in education; it may involve just a few schools or universities. But there is nothing like living together, studying together, and hanging around together over a longer period, or repeated periods, that makes for lasting friendships and a more enduring understanding of each other. It could be in joint studies or extended internships or entrepreneurship programmes. I think we can progress towards that in future. It’s not easy to arrange; it may require some credit to be given to the students. But there will be larger strategic benefit in time.

In the arts, there is low-hanging fruit. We already have a fair bit of exchanges among artists, dramatists and others. We can go further. Singapore is evolving and developing its multiculturalism. It draws on the long traditions of how our cultures evolved within the region. It’s not just about recovering old traditions, but taking them forward and giving them fresh appeal to today’s generations. I think there is a lot of potential for that. Between Singapore and Malaysia, we can certainly do much more together.

Those are my hopes. Some of it is low-hanging fruit. Some of it is a little more complex to achieve, with regard to students, but I think we can do more if our institutions set their minds to it.

It has been a very useful visit. And like I say, it is not just a matter of form that we make these visits, but we take personal interest at every level of leadership in Singapore in this bilateral relationship. Thank you.