In case you are living under a rock, the once settled Pedra Branca issue is now back in the news after Malaysia filed an application last month to revise the 2008 judgement by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Speaking on the issue in Parliament on March 2, Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said that after studying Malaysia's application carefully, Singapore "strongly believes" that the newly found documents presented by Malaysia in its bid to overturn the original judgement do not satisfy the criteria under which it applied for a revision.

Malaysia had earlier raised three "new facts" to argue their position, which includes an internal correspondence by the Singapore colonial authorities in 1958, an incident report filed in 1958 by a British naval officer and an annotated map of naval operations from the 1960s.

This was what Balakrishnan said:

"We will submit to the ICJ our comprehensive and compelling rebuttal to Malaysia's application by June 14, which is the time limit fixed by the ICJ."

"We are confident of our legal team and our case."

Despite the legal challenge, however, Balakrishnan described bilateral relations with Malaysia as "excellent", and said "mutually beneficial bilateral cooperation will continue."

To handle the new development on Pedra Branca, Singapore has assembled an all-star legal team to tackle the case, including former Deputy Prime Minister and Law Minister S. Jayakumar, Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh and former Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong -- who led the original team on the Pedra Branca case.

Here is Balakrishnan's Parliamentary speech on the issue:

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Top photo from MFA

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