There was an awkward moment during Princess Anne’s visit to SG. She remained tactfully silent.

SINGAPORE: Princess Anne, the sister of the United Kingdom’s King Charles III, was in Singapore earlier this month on a working visit. This is at least the third time she has been to the city-state, and the last visit was less than a decade ago. This time, she called on President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, and went to the Kranji War Memorial, the Airbus Asia Training Centre and Rolls-Royce’s Seletar campus.

Her visit, during which she was accompanied by her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, marked 60 years of diplomatic ties between the United Kingdom and the Asian country.

There was one potentially awkward moment during the visit, however. Fortunately, Princess Anne handled it with characteristic tact.

Singapore practises “orchid diplomacy,” where an orchid hybrid is named after a visiting foreign dignitary or an important person. This is done as a symbol of goodwill, friendship and bilateral ties.

Orchids have been named after US President Barack Obama, British singer Elton John and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

It is considered one of the city-state’s unique soft power tools, so to speak.

During Princess Anne’s visit, she unveiled a new orchid, the “Delphinium Anne”. According to The Standard, when Hwang Yu-Ning, the chief executive officer of the National Parks Board, gave her the flower’s birth certificate, she said, “Thank you for that. That’s very special, thank you very much.”

Later, she also admired an orchid named after her mother, Queen Elizabeth II, fifty years ago.

Though Princess Diana passed away in 1997, she remains well beloved to this day. During her marriage to King Charles, her unhappiness at his continued relationship with the then-also-married Camilla Parker Bowles was well known.

However, as the UK’s The Times reported, “If she [Anne] had views on the questionable ‘orchid diplomacy’ of a plant named after the King and Queen positioned alongside another named after Diana, Princess of Wales, she kept them to herself.”

Princess Anne, who has been called the UK’s hardest-working royal, is considered by some to be the “antidote to Andrew,” in reference to her and King Charles’ younger brother, who was recently stripped of his title and honours due to alleged links not only with Jeffrey Epstein but also to the son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who is said to have committed crimes against humanity.

The Princess was even praised publicly by the press in the UK for having worn a beige short-sleeve suit during her visit to the Airbus Asia Training Centre and Rolls-Royce Seletar campus, which she had first worn in 1973. /TISG

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