But there is one difference between Malaysia and Singapore, apart from the majority in one being Malays and the other Chinese. Malays think long term. Singapore short term. Coupled with good public relations, Singapore will steal a march in the short term over Malaysia. I believe in 2061, when the water agreeements expire, Singapore will be part of Malaysia, not as a state but as an adjunct to Johore. Singapore made that possible when it rejected a Malaysian proposal to shore in the profits of the water sold to commercial enterprises. That led to the then prime minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, coming to Kuala Lumpur in 1987 to sort it out with his Malaysian counterpart. It was at this meeting that Malaysia took the upper hand culturally from Singapore, which has tried to wrest it back by other means. In public, though, the Singaporean is seen as a go-getter, a Malaysian a bumbling fool harping on his past but quite happy to fill his pockets with money from any source.

THE PEOPLE'S ACTION PARTY created Singapore out of its image, the work of its long-term leader, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. It dismantled the British superstructure in the island colony and put in its place the sinews of a modern administrative state. But in doing so, it created a whole colony of beavers, who worked hard, kept their thoughts to themselves, and did what they were asked to do. Those who did not follow the general trend were severely dealt with, and that included recalcitrant journalists and overseas magazines, The officials assumed a persona of their own, believed they could do no wrong, and looked down upon the people they negotiated with, if they were Malaysians, and got the edge over them by slick public relations. The general feeling in Singapore is that the country across the causeway is their's for the kicking. The one time they clashed over water, in which Singapore assumed it was theirs and did Malaysia a favour by giving it treated water, it took Mr Lee Kuan Yew to see his counterpart, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, in 1986, and gave the Malaysians the upper hand in relations with the island republic.

CHENGARA VEETIL DEVAN NAIR, or C.V. Devan Nair, is dead. Not where he was born – in Malacca, Malaysia; not in the land of his adoption, Singapore whose president he became; but in exile in Canada, hounded to the end by Mr Lee Kuan Yew, then prime minister but now two steps higher as minister mentor, whose colleague he was and who had him elected as President. He was born in 1923, and died in December 2005. He was, of course, a Malayali, a clan Mr Lee was, and is, afraid of, and who gave him his biggest trouble in his march to be Prime lMinister. He regarded them more dangerous than snakes, and did not look upon them kindly. Mr Devan Nair was weaned into Mr Lee's People's Action Party, from the pro-communist Anti-British League, and later, so Mr Lee's supporters said, he sold his friends to be firmly entrenched with Mr Lee. Mr Nair never wrote his memoirs, so we will never know the truth of this. He was an active writer since 1954, but wrote less and less after he was removed as President in 1993. In 1999, he attracted a libel suit from Mr Lee for what he wrote in Canada, but which was thrown out after his counter-claim. He married a Tamil, who died before he did, had four sons and five daughters.

In Malaysia, facilities are built not for its citizens but for foreigners. Kuala Lumpur has become a poor example of a third rate European of American citizen so that the foreigner will crow about it. But it is neither, and the citizen is shortchanged. Singapore looks after its citizens better, but does not allow them to have their own mind. It treats its citizen like a pet dog, and does not allow him to go beyond an artificial limit. The result is predictable: it is monkey-see-monkey-do mentality at work. Executives are highly paid but do not think 'out of the box' - as the current Western trite phrase to describe what its leaders must do. Malaysian executives working in Singapore talk of discussions which flounder because the Singaporean executive believes in 'monkey-see-monkey-do' scheme of thinking. This is a phase, and this phase will last as long as modern Singapore paterfamilias, 83 year old Lee Kuan Yew, lives. The island does well economically, but it does not allow thinking to the contrary, and so the Singaporean is kept dark about the future. But the new dawn is already at hand. Particular groups of Singaporeans do not want to be part of the system, and bid their time when they can play a meaningful role outside of the People's Action Party. The laws are made to keep all except those from the People's Action Party out. The opposition is allowed space to exist only if it follows the PAP's guidelines. So the debates are artificial, just as it is in Malaysia, but the opposition, not known even by the PAP or UMNO in Malaysia, is active.

The independent civil service is in Britain, but not in Malaysia. The civil servant will not rise far in Britain if he is politically committed or if he panders to the ruling party. Unlike in Malaysia, they would tell off their ministers. The traffic police would arrest ministers for traffic offences. And the ministers would appear in court, is convicted, and pays the fine. It would never happen in Malaysia unless the government wants to get rid of him from the cabinet but does not know how and hope he would resign. We have a committee to vet books by former civil servants and ministers. Unless the book is written by somebody close to the levers of power, or if the book is on bird watching, it disappears in a block hole and does not see the light of day. Since many manuscripts have disappeared this way, many do not write books in retirement. So while the interest in knowing what happened has remained high, it would be for books written by foreigners. There is another reason for this: Malaysian civil servants and ministers are more at home with foreigners to talk than locals. Mr Lee Kuan Yew's book has reached a wide audience. But no one has written a riposte, because unless he is close to the lever of power in Malaysia, it would disappear in the black hole. So a civil servant or diplomat or minister rarely writes his or her memoir.

IT IS FORTY YEARS SINCE Singapore was ejected from Malaysia, on 9 August 1965, less than two years after it was formed on 16 September 1963, though in Malaysia the date is August 31, and the publication two months ago of the late Patrick Keith's book, Ousted. We have different opinions on the affair. We are told, officially and in the history books, that it was a cordial affair. The Star repeats that canard. It was anything but cordial. The two prime ministers - Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia and Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore - though were from Cambridge, did not get along. The Tunku, 62 at the time, believed in nature and Mr Lee, then 43, in nurture. Mr Lee upped the ante throughout, let people who were opposed to separation lead the negotiations, did not read the signals from Kuala Lumpur as he would now at 80. The talks were bound to fail. The Peoples' Action Party saw itself as replacing the Malaysian Chinese Association in the Alliance, as the National Front was known at that time. The main Singapore negotiators, which included the then culture minister and later deputy prime minister, Mr S. Rajaratnam, did not want to leave Malaysia. Neither did Mr Devan Nair, the PAP MP for Bangsar later President of Singapore and now living in exile in Canada. Whatever the history books might say, the fact is the Tunku took the decision in London while he was recuperating for shingles in the London clinic. It took Mr Lee and his cabinet by surprise when Tun Razak, then Malaysian deputy prime minister, informed Mr Lee about it. There were furious negotiations between Malaysia and Singapore in the run up to the negotiations. The then Singapore deputy prime minister, Dr Toh Chin Chye, wrote to the Tunku and saw him, but he was told Singapore could stay if Mr Lee was out of the picture. Dr Toh's decline in Singapore politics began then in independent Singapore.

A former police officer told me the other day that corruption cannot be eradicated, it can only be controlled. That is why laws are passed to controll it. But over the years laws to control corruptiont have been relaxed as other laws are passed to enable civil servants and others to engage in corruption without being caught. A man is not corrupt until he lis convicted in court, which gives additional work for the prosecutor and allows corruption to fester. The courts are in a mess today that it is an obstacle course to anyone stupid enough to file an action himself. In Singapore, the professed aim of government is to serve the people. The island does it to reduce, not eradicate, corruption. It is relatively corrupt free because on one man, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. But he is more than 80, and that makes Singapore apart from the rest of Asia. But he is past 80, that means Singapore would join the rest of Asia sooner than you expect. in Malaysia, there is no Lee Kuan Yew, and corruption is rampant and laws to take the corrupter to court are few and far between. Is the authority prepared to make an example of the mayor for extending his house so that his neighbour's house is in danger? The IGP's term is extended after his son was arrested. Today (28 October) the Star reports that others are but to bring down the ex-mayor of Kuala Lumpur. Maybe that is true. The system is so corrupt this would happen, if is true. But the mayor who is pressured by his staff to go must go, and keep his head high. Given a choice, money takes precedence over keep one's head high. So long as this is the norm, the government servant will cock a snook at the public they are expected to serve.

THE EMAILS AND TELEPHONE CALLS I received after I wrote the piece yesterday (3 October 2005) led me thinking about the Bali bombings three years ago. I did not have the guts to write about it then. It remains a theory, as what I wrote yesterday is, but they remain plausible theories. It will be years before they are proved right, by someone looking at the causes of the Bali bombings. Historians, and journalists, looking for what happened miss the causes, often lie. They look at the dominant event, and interview people of their recollection of it, and miss the larger story, which is why it took place. If you read Patrick Keith's book, Ousted, the story of an insider's account of why Singapore was ousted from Malaysia in 1965, you get the impression that it was wholly the Tengku's fault and Mr Lee Kuan Yew was blameless. Much like the Iraq war, where the Americans are blameless and insurgents are guilty of fighting their invader. But the two men represented two different points of view. Singapore would have remained in Malaysia had Mr Lee Kuan Yew behaved then as he behaves now. Patrick Keith, who left Malaysia for Australia forty ears ago, wrote the book, which is pubiished in Singapore and (not yet) released in Malaysia - the Special Branch has not cleared it for distribution) as a senior government official involved in the drama. But Singapore would have left Malaysia in 1965, because Mr Lee did not understand the Tengku, and it was the Tengku who held the cards. And he put in charge of the negotiations those who wanted Singapore to be out of Malaysia. All this remains a theory, although books are coming out by historians and journalists who suggest the Tengku's raison d'ete was correct and Mr Lee's wrong.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew did not understand this when he hanged two Indonesian marines for an explosion at an official block in Singapore during Indonesia's confrontation of Malaysia, and paid a heavy price for it: he had to place wreaths at their graves before bilateral ties resumed, but on sufferance. His successors have not fared better.

I have had a love-hate relationship with him for four decades. Our first meeting did not herald a good start. As a young Reuters reporter in Singapore, I had barged into the VIP room at Kallang airport in Singapore where he and then Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew were huddled in discussions over Malaysia.

When an independent Vietnam flexed its muscles, and its prime minister, Mr Pham van Dong, came avisiting, the unity of ASEAN made it a painful visit for him. The countries kept each other informed of the Vietnamese prime minister's aim of causing a rift within ASEAN. By the time he visited Singapore, Mr Lee Kuan Yew was there to tell him off. That would not be possible now.

Relations between nations are defined by protocol and diplomatic conventions. When Lee Kuan Yew retired as Singapore's prime minister in 1989, he wanted to visit the Asean leaders. He was told in no uncertain terms that his hosts in Jakarta would be the vice-president and in Kuala Lumpur, the deputy prime minister. He decided not to visit the two capitals.

Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore and Fidel Castro in Cuba are in office so long as they have - both since 1959 - because they brilliantly understood power in their societies. In Malaysia, the first three prime ministers did, too; but the fourth, rode roughshod of it for two decades, only to stumble; the fifth, for all his personal charisma, cannot move out of his predecessor's shadow to hang on to power.

UMNO could still be turned around. But it would be at heavy cost. This, I am afraid, it is not prepared to pay. The newspapers, radio and television it controls should be turned around to spread the UMNO message with intellectuals arguing its shortcomings, with readers and listeners invited to share their views. It must move away from treating the media as the public relations arm of the Great Leader. They should be run professionally, their future determined solely by the intellectual content and how seemlessly it has turned it around into an organ of weight. The present system of editors sacked when a new Great Leader appears, or when he is dissatisfied, is not how to run it. Mr Lee Kuan Yew, in the early days of Singapore, had a cast iron rule: if Singapore television carried items about him for more than 60 seconds, there was hell to pay. He understood how the media worked and turned it to his advantage. In UMNO, it is those who barely read newspapers who are in charge of information and media policy. It is not that the government does not know of this. I have been invited to several private meetings with senior politicians and civil servants to talk of this, but I fear this is only to show they mean business than any desire to do anything about it.

An Oxbridge degree is not as unusual or rare as we make it out to be. The first Malay to graduate from Oxford was Raja Chulan ibni almarhum Sultan Abdullah of Perak in the 1890s. The late governor of Bank Negara Malaysia and the late Lord President, Tun Ismail Ali and Tun Suffian respectively, went to Cambridge on a Queen's Scholarship in the late 1930s. A young Malay engineer from Clare College, Cambridge, six years ago bested Mr Lee Kuan Yew's startling performance there in the 1940s. It so annoyed the soon-to-be Singapore prime minister, Mr Lee's son that when he visited his alma mater shortly after, that when he met the Malaysia-Singapore students union, but excluded all Malaysians from that meeting.

The Singapore's senior minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, finds nothing wrong with Pak Lah's faulty annointment. He sees it as one more way to keep fundamentalist Islam in check in South-east Asia. And so the rest of the world. But in Malaysia itself, the unease within the Malay community, though not the non-Malay, is and should be cause for alarm.

NEPOTISM IS ALIVE AND well in Malaysia. As elsewhere in the world. When Rupert Murdoch considers who should oversee his vast business empire after him, the products of his loins get a head start. So when the Genting Highlands chieftain retires at 85. It is common in the business and financial world. In politics and in the civil service, it is frowned upon but it exists after a fashion. When one has the power to do it, why should one demur? The dynastic succession is now a political ideal as a monarchy or a commercial fact of life. Often this nepotic evidence is indirect, allowing the children of the leader to make hay while daddy (or as is as common, mummy) governs or rules. In several Asian countries, sons succeed fathers. Competence is implicit in several, but not all, of them. In Singapore, its long time Prime Minister and now senior minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, has sons and their wives in important cogs in the republic's wheel; one, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, will be prime minister before this year is out. In North Korea, Kim Chong Il succeed to the presidency when his father, Mr Kim Il Sung died in 1994. In Malaysia it varies. Two cabinet ministers owe their position to their late fathers: the second prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, and the third, Tun Hussein Onn and their sons, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak and Dato' Hishamuddin Tun Hussein sit in the cabinet. The DAP leader, Mr Lim Kit Siang, grooms his son, Mr Lim Guan Eng, to succeed him. It is considered a "right" to allow the children to make hay while their fathers shine.

This is a much needed reform. One can understand UMNO's and BN's concerns. They have been in office since 1955, they need to continue in office to exist. The Opposition is more aggressive, the new voter, especially the young, wants BN to explain why they should vote for it, and many are unconvinced. It has gone to pieces in Kelantan and Trengganu, where PAS rules, and resort to official pettines to teach the people there a lesson. That backfires. Hubris has struck BN. Helped by the long and autocratic presence of its leader of 22 years. Like Mr Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, Dr Mahathir in Malaysia proves to the world that an autocratic governance will in the end fail. Once the rot sets in, as in Malaysia and Singapore, time will destroy what they stood for. The brilliant Mr Lee presided over Singapore's remarkable growth, and now insists on staying to preside over its fall. And so the brilliant Dr Mahathir in Malaysia.

Should Dr Mahathir go ahead with his reported plans, it could only last until the UMNO General Assembly. Party elections must be held then. It is fair to assume all positions, including the President, would be challenged. This would put Pak Lah at an advantage if he were to stand for the presidency without incumbency. Dr Mahathir must also stand as UMNO president if he wants to wield power behind the scenes. Given the mood in UMNO, he would well face defeat. One supporter of his said Dr Mahathir need not be Senior Minister as Mr Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore; he could control events in power without being in the cabinet. Or, in the Malaysian idiom, a win-win result.

Singapore ignores the historical past. Why did Malaya, as she then was, agree to three cents (the sen came later) per 1,000 gallons in the agreements of 1961 and 1962? Johore had wanted a far higher price, but Singapore was making its case to join Malaysia, and the then Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman Putra, decided that since the two states would be in the newly formed Malaysia, there was no need for the island state to pay too high a price. But Singapore left the Malaysian federation two years later in 1965. The agreement provides for a review after 25 years, and when the purchasing value of the dollar declines. Singapore does not accept this. She did not in 1986 and 1987, and that was unravelled only when the then Singapore prime minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, came to pay, in the Malay mind, homage to Dr Mahathir. That is how it is view here. Nothing can erase that.

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