You say the Malaysia media does not carry the official Singapore view. Tell me, why should it? The matter is under negotiations. What purpose does it do to argue these points in public when the talks are not complete? There is no requirement that one country's press must carry the view of the other government in a bilateral dispute or discussions. Singapore, in the Malaysian view, is browbeating Malaysians to a decision. This Malaysia would not do. Singapore wants to score points in a dispute it has lost ground. The origins of the water dispute is not in the price of water or how much water Johore supplies Singapore or indeed any of the justifications and criticisms that each has lobbed on the other but in the talks over renewing the water pact in the 1980s in which the Singapore official in charge - I think it was Ngiam Tong Dow - messed up the talks. This led to Lee Kuan Yew coming to Kuala Lumpur, meeting Dr Mahathir in the Hilton Hotel, and losing ground.

Underling the political disputes between Singapore and Malaysia is a cultural divide in which each misjudges and miscalculates the other. The cultural xenophobia of the Malay and Chinese pins the overriding political and administrative problems, and one is happy with the other only when it dominates. Indeed, bilateral ties after Singapore's independence from Malaysia in 1965 underlined this dominance with each walking on eggs to make it work. That led to an uneasy peace. That could not last. Especially as newer leaders in Malaysia found themselves ill at ease with Singapore, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. But when the second generation of leaders firmly took over the reins in both, the old understandings and respect could not overcome the insipient nationalisms in each. Despite it, however, there is an underlying acceptance, amongst Singapore and Malaysian leaders privately, that the two countries must live together, that Malaysia cannot prevent the sale of water to Singapore, that even in enmity such niceties as water supplies must go on. But official ties continue to be dipped in xenophobia. When the dominant political party in each must prove its xenophobia and nationalism to stay in power, issues like this must crop up.

Where does Dr Mahathir fit into all this? On the outside. He wants no more than be accepted in the West as a Third World leader of substance. so he works his views to be an enfante terrible so that leaders in Western chancelleries look upon as a representative of the other view. One man who did that brilliantly is the Singapore senior minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. There is this inherent belief amongst many non-Europeans of their own inferiority, based on the assumption the West is always right, and our views compared to its, is always wanting. One senior Singapore diplomat even wrote an essay - "Can Asians think?" - to suggest they could not, not in the narrow confines of Western intellectual thought. And any one who cannot is confined to the dung heap of history.

All that would disappear when he retires. As well as any protection his favoured business men and his children could expect from him. He is not alone in perceiving that his country owes him a living. Like many an Asian leader, he believed he is untouchable until he is. President Ferdinand Marcos was drummed out of office, as was President Suharto. And they and their descendants have had, and continue, to pay the price of their arrogance in believing that nothing can stop them for what they do, legally and illegally. Now it is Mr Lee Kuan Yew and, not far behind, Dr Mahthir. Mr Lee remained in office a tad too long, and now finds the modern Singapore he built from scratch threatens to unscramble as hubris stares him in his face. Singapore much-vaunted airlines, SIA, saw its cash reserves of S$5 billion reduced to a debt of S$1 billion in two years. Singapore's much vaunted success in building itself into a first world bastion in a third world environment is under check, with losses running into billions strewn all over its cherished financial and commercial institutions. One misadventure in Suzhou, China, alone cost S$6 billion.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew still cannot accept he was outmanouevred by the Tengku when Singapore was forced out Malaysia in 1965. He initiated the coalition, which in a different form, governs Malaysia today. He believed in the unity of races, in practice, rather than in the theory it is practiced now. His was a master in the art of the compromise, would not discuss anything in the cabinet the MCA president, Tun Tan Siew Sin, or the MIC president, Tun V.T. Sambanthan, did not agree to. He always referred to himself as a 'primus inter pares', first amongst equals, in government.

The decision to expel Singapore had been taken in May 1965, when the Tengku, fed up with the Singapore Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew's attempt to have his PAP replace the MCA as the Chinese party in the Alliance coalition. The Tengku would have none of it. Mr Lee then overplayed his hand by producing a draft secession of Singapore when he could not get his way with Federal ministers. They would give way than create a scene. Mr Lee then outdid himself, as the Tengku once told me in his retirement when I would call on him almost weekly at his house in Jalan Tunku, by placing the document before the Tengku when he could not have his way. The Tengku signed it. And told him to get his cabinet to countersign it.

Some like President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh failed spectacularly to imprint their self-importance, only to impoverish, and divide, the countries they led. Fewer rose above self to be national icons: Mahatma Gandhi in India, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Sukarno in Indonesia, Mao Zedong in China, Chiang Kai Shek in Taiwan. Two succeeded spectacularly in imposing their personal foibles on the nations they led, only to discover that that was not enough, and the nation needed another direction which they could not re-engineer: Singapore, Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia's Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed. But they succeeded only to fail.

Most do not understand the prevailing cultural conditions which prevent his return. Dr Mahathir survived as long for he governed as a Malay feudal leader. When he fell foul of his fedual obligations, his decline began. He survived by a ruthlessness in politics as shrewdly as Mr Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, the knuckle duster continuing his rule long after his feudal grip was no more. He humiliated his designated successor. His second was to talk to the Malays as an uncouth "kurang ajar", telling them bluntly to wallow in their oldfashioned world and be marginalised.

But when the gloss of leadership tarnishes, as now, even former friends turn out to be more than barking dogs. I am always amused by the desire of many leaders to appear on programmes that have a worldwide audience in what is an ego-massaging act. CNN built an unjustified reputation to make sundry world leaders rush to appear on it. Those who do not build a more solid reputation. Look at Mr Lee Kuan Yew. He sets the terms for any television interview, he knows what he wants to say, and no one, not even the most obstreporous interviewer, can shake him off that. He also bites back with equal venom, and today he is regarded as a statesman by the very reporters who dare not confront him.

In one day last week, the newspapers reported three instances of nepotic behaviour of heads of government that must send shivers down the spine of the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, and his three sons. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's son surrendered himself on the normal crimes and misdeameanours leaders' children are active in: influence peddling, wealth and businesses acquired by their closeness to the Leader, official favours they could otherwise not get. In Jakarta, Tommy Suharto is on trial for his unfair and extra-legal actions as the former president's son. In Singapore, the former Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew's children and in-law in prominent positions, which though justifiable on merit, nevertheless tarnishes the gloss on the island republic's vaunted meritocracy.

A slight on a Muslim anywhere in the world, but especially in Singapore, gets government ministers involved. So, the deputy education minister, Dato' Aziz Shamsuddin, ticks off the Singapore government for refusing to allow Muslim Malay six-year-old girls to wear the tudung (head scarf) with their school uniforms. Not to be outdone, PAS gets into the act. Its mentri besar in Kelantan write a letter in Malay to Mr Lee Kuan Yew no less voicing the same emotive reaction.

The PAP can hold power only if it continues to lead the dominant Chinese cultural majority; but that frays, and not just at the edges. It plays off one community against the other, in this stated belief in a meritocratic society. But at the cost of civic liberties, which an educated citizenry, the grandchildren of who brought the PAP into power, can no longer accept. This is UMNO's conundrum, where it retains Malay political support but not its cultural centre. The PAP is in no danger yet, but this would surface after its leading light and senior minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, 78, left the scene.

It is therefore safe to extrapolate that the ADC report, given to Congressional aides visiting Malaysia, was (a) to demonise PAS; (b) to cuddle up to the right-wing, Islamic bashing American political spectrum; and (c) to establish credentials for the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed to show he is one with President George Bush in preventing Islamic fundamentalists from taking over anywhere. One should therefore assume that the Singapore senior minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, visited here also to steel Dr Mahathir with his paranoia of Islamic resurgence and pass on his own to Washington. In other words, has this Islamic fundamentalist paranoia to do with the short term gain to be invited for tea and cookies at the White House and photographs in the Rose Garden? This is unlikely for now. The powerful National Security Council, I am told, has vetoed it until there are changes that the Prime Minister cannot meet without damaging his own political credibility in Malaysia. Among the changes, for one, relates to the prisoner in Sungei Buloh and primary Malaysian non-person, one Dato' Anwar Ibrahim.

The Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, who cancelled his planned visit to Britain for what was to have been for medical treatment, did not mince his words on this fear. But it is not, as Singapore senior minister Lee Kuan Yew suggested during his recent visit to Kuala Lumpur, that Muslim groups ought to be feared and rejected for their refusal to accept democratic norms.

Singapore chose to reply. But why Goh Chok Tong lit the fuse of yet another bilateral spat bothers many. Why did he not leave it to a lesser politician to say, if it had to be said? Goh has much respect in Malaysia, certainly more than either the senior minister, Lee Kuan Yew, or the deputy prime minister and Lee's son, Lee Hsien Loong.

The Tengku feared Tun Razak's political naivety, especially with Malaysia's neighbours, especially Singapore, and took steps after the island left Malaysia in 1965, to neutralise it. Tun Razak and the island's leader, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, were batchmates at the Raffles College before the war. It was an unequal relationship, one which Mr Lee dominated.

SINGAPORE IS IN a quandry. Its armed forces have the most powerful weaponry in Southeast Asia. Its education system turns out graduates whose workplace is the world. Now the Southeast Asian bedroom community for globalisation, it transformed, in four decades, as Mr Lee Kuan Yew put its, from the third world to the first. It second guesses the future and changes accordingly. It is a genetic laboratory, in which the government decides, brooking no opposition, on what is best for the state. In a region where different standards measure progress, whatever its leaders might say, in which cultural, religious and other unquantifiable standards mould growth and development, the Singapore experience provoked envy and disgruntle. Singapore now decides its people lack critical thinking and computer skills. The robots it create, in this genetic laboratory, is fashioned to an ideal in which culture, religion, community is important only when the state insists. But creativity and critical thinking is not what you can accuse a Singaporean of. Singapore has become a society in which its citizens would rather be someone else: many in a recent survey would rather be Caucasian or Japanese. Success is the only goal, and that is measured by a slide rule: when the rest of the world live by other standards, its successes, certainly in the short term, gives it an edge -- in the short term.

Has Malaysia prepared itself strategically and tactically for whatever happens in Indonesia? The fissiparous pressures in Acheh, Mollucas, Ambon, West Papua and elsewhere coupled with Western criticism of human rights abuses, many, especially Westerners, believe, would fragment Indonesia into half-a-dozen or more mutually exclusive states at war with each other. The Singapore Senior Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, during his visit here, could not understand this Malay unconcern at this development and asked an old friend incredulously: "You mean the Malays would accept Indonesian hegemony over them?" But it is more than that. What happens in Indonesia after the fall of President Suharto is the normal power play when a dynasty falls. Those who lived through Confrontation and 1965, when the failed Gestapu coup brought General Suharto to power see President Suharto's predicament no worse than President Sukarno's under him.

The Prime Minister tells Mr Lee Kuan Yew he did not know his just sacked deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was detained under the Internal Security Act after his arrest on 20 September 1998. Never mind that he, as home minister, had to sign the order. He is, after all, a man in his seventies, and one could forgive him his occasional lapse of memory. Yet, no government would dare go against any senior official without his express clearance. He was annoyed with the Anti-Corruption Agency chief for investigating one of his senior civil servants without his approval. His Sandiwara visits to international conferences is well known: his speeches and comments, if you read or listen to what passes for the "national" media in Malaysia, dominated the conference, the other leaders present restricting their role to agree to what the Great Man had to say. The latest is the South African International Dialogue in Maputo. A posse of Malaysian journalists were on hand to be told what took place behind closed doors, and they were regurgitated for the edification of the Malaysian official media readers and listeners. The Prime Minister, lest we forget, is an international statesman on whose words reduces other statesmen to slithering jelly before his presence.

MR Lee Kuan Yew COMES A-CALLING

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