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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN 000572 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/MTS, SINGAPORE FOR DAO AND ODC 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/06/2016 
TAGS: PREL PGOV ASEC ECON SOCI CVIS MARR PTER PHUM
BX 
SUBJECT: BRUNEI'S HARI RAYA: OPEN TALK AT OPEN HOUSES 
 
Classified By: DCM Justin Friedman, reasons 1.4 (b) & (d) 
 
SUMMARY 
------- 
 
¶1. (C) At this year's Hari Raya open houses -- a custom that 
distinguishes Brunei's celebration of the post-Ramadan month 
-- Ambassador and DCM heard unusually candid  views from 
senior GoB officials on issues ranging from royal succession, 
bilateral security cooperation, and the status of major 
investment projects to education and pension reform.  END 
SUMMARY. 
 
Hari Raya - Brunei's Open Home Tradition 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶2. (U) In Brunei tradition, Muslims from all walks of life 
open their homes to family, friends, and strangers alike to 
share a meal and some conversation during Hari Raya (a 
holiday otherwise known as Eid Al-Fitr in the non-Malay 
Muslim world) festivities following Ramadan.  The Sultan sets 
the model for his country by holding three full days of open 
house at the palace.  In addition to a VIP reception for 
Senior officials and Ambassadors the first day, the Sultan 
invites anyone in Brunei to a bountiful, free buffet meal, a 
chance for men and boys to shake hands with His Majesty (the 
Queen and the Sultan's second wife greet the women), and to 
walk away with a box filled with goodies.  Every child who 
visits also walks away with five Brunei dollars (approx. USD 
3.25).  This year, the palace recorded over 102,000 visitors; 
close to one third of the population of Brunei. 
 
¶3. (SBU) Although open houses continue for the entire Islamic 
lunar month of Shawal (this year October 24 - November 21 in 
Brunei), Senior government officials specifically invite to 
the diplomatic community to visit their homes - mostly on the 
first three days of the month.  This celebration is a 
caterer's dream as hosts compete to put on the most elaborate 
spread of Brunei staples - spicy beef rendang, mango fried 
fish, and chicken curry all served with mountains of rice and 
noodles.  It is also a driver's nightmare as dueling official 
vehicles - flags flying - race from house to house to 
maximize this opportunity to schmooze the powerful.  In the 
first twelve days of Hari Raya starting on October 24, 
Ambassador Skodon called on 66 Brunei officials (DCM called 
separately on 45 with considerable overlap in lists).  (The 
Ambassador from the Philippines claims the one-day record 
this year with 22 calls on the second day of Hari Raya; the 
U.S. Ambassador, going for quality over quantity, topped out 
at 16 visits in one day.)  Amid the over-eating and moving 
vehicle violations, considerable useful business can get 
done.  (NOTE: All names below have been stripped of their 
honorific titles for brevity. END NOTE.) 
 
Royal Succession 
---------------- 
 
¶4. (C) The Sultan's accessibility and largess in throwing 
open the palace to all comers serves a political purpose.  By 
perpetuating the image of a caring monarch who is close to 
his subjects, it reinforces the Sultan's personal popularity 
and reinforces the legitimacy of Brunei's absolute monarchy. 
Indeed, emboffs heard almost nothing put praise for the 
Sultan from those Bruneians whom they met at the open houses, 
regardless of their station in local society. 
 
¶5. (C) A few Bruneians, however, did reveal some concern to 
emboffs about Brunei's future after the current Sultan -- who 
has just turned 60 and has ruled for nearly four decades -- 
departs the scene by choice or natural cause.  One Permanent 
Secretary in the Prime Minister's office even broached the 
 
SIPDIS 
normally taboo subject about how the nature of monarchical 
rule could change following the Crown Prince's ultimate 
accession to the throne.  Referring to the finite nature of 
Brunei's oil and gas reserves, the PermSec hinted guardedly 
that Brunei's next ruler would not be able to buy the loyalty 
of his subjects through lavish social welfare schemes.  He 
would face hard decisions about how to replace the income 
stream from oil and gas, i.e., whether to invest in domestic 
economic diversification or in foreign ventures.  A 
recognition of how complex the situation might become was, 
according to this senior official, part of the reason why the 
current Sultan was putting in place institutions like the 
Legislative Council which would eventually help his son 
 
BANDAR SER 00000572  002 OF 004 
 
 
govern the country - and, by implication, cause him to be a 
less absolute monarch than his father.  "The Crown Prince 
will take over a different kind of country," this official 
told the Ambassador, leaving unspoken the clear implication 
that he will perforce be a different kind of ruler. 
 
Bilateral Security Cooperation Praised 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶6. (C) We heard repeated praise during our calls for the 
strengthening bilateral security relationship.  Deputy 
Minister of Defense Yasmin, as well as two MoD Deputy 
Permanent Secretaries, told us that they were looking forward 
to the U.S. proposed PACOM Capabilities assessment and 
Defense Resource Management Study (DRMS).  While there 
remains some confusion at lower levels about the scope and 
purpose of these separate studies, there is a strong desire 
to use these opportunities to help Brunei achieve the goals 
of its defense strategy white paper.  (A visit by our 
Singapore-based ODC the week after the Hari Raya holiday 
helped clarify the goals of the two studies.)  Yasmin also 
told us that he would be briefing the proposed APCSS seminar 
on Civil-Military Emergency Planning and Coordination to the 
Prime Minister's office (COMMENT: we interpret this to mean 
he will brief Crown Prince Billah, the government lead on 
this issue.  END COMMENT). 
 
¶7. (C) Salbiah Sulaiman, Deputy Permanent Secretary in the 
Prime Minister's Office told us that our proposed HSPD-6 
terrorist information sharing agreement had high level 
support and had been staffed out for response from the MFAT. 
Police Commissioner Zainuddin Jalani, just back from a visit 
to Boston and San Francisco, praised his meetings there with 
DS official and displayed a new sensitivity for post's 
security challenges in our current chancery. 
 
Mixed Bag on Business Opportunities 
----------------------------------- 
 
¶8. (C) Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Permanent 
Secretary Lim Jock Hoi, a non-Muslim but fellow attendee at 
 
SIPDIS 
open houses, told us that Brunei was actively looking at Free 
Trade Area templates in advance of his next meeting with USTR 
under our Trade and Investment Framework Agreement.  Lim said 
that Brunei was looking to the U.S. to send a signal about an 
APEC-wide free trade area.  (See also septel on GoB's 
positions going into the APEC leaders' meeting).  Lim also 
asked for a "template" of the FTA's the USG is pursuing with 
ASEAN, hinting that Brunei might like to move down the 
bilateral FTA route at some point in the future. 
 
¶9. (C) The biggest business news making the rounds during 
Hari Raya was word that Brunei Economic Development Board 
Chairman John Perry would resign by the end of the year. 
Perry told us that he had grown frustrated at the slow pace 
of decisionmaking by the GoB on several key projects 
requiring long-term agreements on the supply of natural gas - 
the proposed Alcoa aluminum smelter being most prominent. 
From several sources, we heard that the natural-gas fueled 
methanol plant at Sungai Liang - a cornerstone project for 
Brunei's plan to expand into downstream industries - would 
get the go-ahead in March 2007.   However, we were also told 
by people in the project contracting chain that no decision 
had been made about the necessary infrastructure development 
required to support this project and a proposed companion 
fertilizer project at the same site.  Brunei LNG Director 
Fred Smenk, who has an institutional suspicion of these 
projects because they would divert some of Brunei's natural 
gas production from his company's LNG exports, told us that 
no decisions had been made about the required natural gas 
supplies.  He also noted that it would be very easy to for 
his firm to add another LNG line for export production to 
absorb the gas proposed for these two projects plus the Alcoa 
plant. 
 
¶10. (C) In other business news, Deputy Minister of 
Communications Yusoff Abdul Hamid told us that all 
e-government computer networking contracting decisions had 
been suspended.  He said that technology specifications of 
different Ministries were in conflict and he wanted to force 
a single technology on all government agencies for both 
interoperability gains and cost savings. 
 
¶11. (C) Several Ministry of Health officials -- some of the 
 
BANDAR SER 00000572  003 OF 004 
 
 
more ardent advocates of the e-government program -- told us 
of tenders planned or in the works to completely re-equip 
Brunei's hospitals and clinics with state-of-the-art lab and 
diagnostic equipment.  They said that U.S. firms were 
well-positioned to take a large share of these tenders - 
assuming they bid - as U.S. firms' technologies were regarded 
as superior to major competitors from Germany and Japan.  We 
were told by Min. Health Permanent Secretary Serbini Ali and 
the hospital's director that a major expansion of the RIPAS 
Hospital would soon be launched. 
 
Education Reform - Target of Opportunity 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶12. (C) Minister of Education Abdul Rahman Taib raised his 
interest in seeing Brunei educators absorb "American 
classroom culture."  He would like to send mid-career 
teachers and administrators to the U.S. on six to twelve 
month programs to train and observe primary and secondary 
education in the U.S.  He also offered to look again at the 
issue of accepting U.S.-trained teachers' credentials for use 
in Brunei.  Picking up on a theme we've heard from several 
sources about growing interest in educational opportunities 
in the U.S., Deputy Minister of Education Mohammad asked 
about Islamic Studies programs at U.S. universities.  We were 
also informed that the list of schools to which recipients of 
the prestigious Supreme Commander's Scholarship may apply 
now, for the first time, includes several U.S. universities. 
 
Financial/Pension Reform - Serious Thinking 
------------------------------------------- 
 
¶13. (C) Surprisingly, we were asked, unprompted, to discuss 
pension reform in the homes of several Deputy Permanent 
Secretaries.  Ministry of Finance Dep. Perm. Sec. Mohd Rosan 
 
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Yunus -- reportedly the blogger behind 
www.bruneiresources.com -- echoed discussions we heard in 
several other homes, saying that Brunei would need to raise 
the retirement age from 55 (50 for women) to be able to 
afford its generous pension program.  Yunus expected that 
Brunei would implement a small income tax in the coming years 
not for the minimal revenue generated, but to create a 
stronger sense of ownership and responsibility for the wise 
use by the Bruneian people of the public services they now 
consume for free. 
 
Other Issues -- Human Rights, Visa Waiver Program 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
¶14. (SBU) During his open house, Attorney General Kitrani 
explained to the Ambassador in some detail the government's 
internal procedures for review of detention of individuals 
incarcerated without trial under the Internal Security Act. 
This information will be incorporated into the Human Rights 
Report. 
 
¶15. (SBU) Minister of Home Affairs Adanan approached the 
Ambassador during the Sultan's Open House to ask for a "grace 
period" of the suspension of the visa waiver program for 
Bruneians issued non-biometric passports after October 26. 
The Minister explained that Brunei had finally signed a 
contract for production of its new, biometric passports, but 
the vendor could not promise delivery before the first 
quarter of 2007, at the earliest.  The Ambassador told the 
Minister that there could be no grace period for enforcing 
this legislatively-mandated requirement, but that we looked 
forward to restoring full Bruneian participation in the VWP 
as soon as possible after the biometric passports were 
introduced. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶16. (C) Although we heard some minor grumbling about the 
increasing cost and dutiful nature of maintaining Open Houses 
that are open to all comers, in general Bruneians appear to 
revel in a custom that has become an integral part of their 
breaking of the Ramadan fast and which stands in marked 
contrast to the usual reserve and formality that 
characterizes life in the Sultanate.  For diplomats, the Open 
House circuit offers an opportunity to engage Bruneians of 
all walks of life in an informal, friendly setting; in 
addition to covering the points above, emboffs used the 
opportunity to advocate for specific U.S. businesses, endorse 
 
BANDAR SER 00000572  004 OF 004 
 
 
political reform, and cover a wide range of other issues on 
the USG agenda.  For Bruneians, the Open Houses serve to 
solidify their sense of community and shared "Brunei-ness," 
and so bolster the social cohesion that helps maintain 
stability in this corner of the Islamic world.  END COMMENT. 
SKODON