Book Reviews: Tom Plate’s conversations with Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamad

I just completed reading American Professor Tom Plate’s two books under his “Giants of Asia” series, Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew and Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad.

Both books are available in major bookstores in Singapore and are relatively easy to read for the secondary school level. There’s no language or intellectual masturbation in Plate’s books, characteristic of many political books.

It’s amazing how these two strong-men, “soft authoritarian (as described by Plate)” leader are so alike in their temperament and style of governance, yet seems to hold such disdain for each other.

When both of them were the Prime Ministers of Singapore and Malaysia respectively, that was when diplomatic ties between the two neighbours were the most exciting, with constant banters and bickering.

For old time sake, here’s what Mahathir said about Lee Kuan Yew to Tom Plate:

“He is a big frog in a small pond. He is not satisfied with what he has. He had ambitions to become Prime Minister of all Malaysia. He tries to lecture people but people dislike that. People do regard him as an intellectual, as something more than just an ordinary politician. He’s always invited to give his views on things and, to that extent, he is something bigger than Singapore. But the fact remains that he is [only] the Mayor of Singapore. This is something he doesn’t like. You see, he wants to be big. And he feels that we [in Malaysia] took away his opportunity to lead a real country. But I think he will go down in history as a very remarkable intellectual and politician at the same time, which is not a very often thing.”

On the books, I appreciate that Plate did not choose to frame his analysis of the two Asian leaders in the context of human rights and democracy issues which western liberal journalists tend to do. This allows more room for Plate to delve deeper into the brains of these two leaders and give them due recognition for the economic and social successes they have propelled Singapore and Malaysia to.

For all the misgivings that some may have on the bullying strong arm style of politics both Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir employed during their reigns, one cannot deny that overall, both were great leaders of their time.

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