{"id":39660,"date":"2018-06-01T11:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T01:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=39660"},"modified":"2018-06-01T10:19:32","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T00:19:32","slug":"malaysia-and-singapore-dreams-and-nightmares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/malaysia-and-singapore-dreams-and-nightmares\/","title":{"rendered":"Malaysia and Singapore: dreams and nightmares"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The joke of the week in Singapore:<\/p>\n

A Singapore man goes to bed in May\u00a01988 and sleeps for three decades. In May\u00a02018, he awakes to be astonished by the length of his beard and the age of his wife. His grown children are called and the grandchildren introduced. Then he asks, \u2018Who is Singapore\u2019s leader now?\u2019<\/p>\n

When told that it\u2019s Prime Minister Lee, he muses: \u2018I knew LKY would never go away. What about Malaysia?\u2019<\/p>\n

Malaysia\u2019s leader is Dr Mahathir.<\/p>\n

The awakened one shakes his head: \u2018Still Lee and Mahathir! I\u2019m going back to sleep. Wake me up when something changes around here!\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In one version of the joke, the punch line has a coda:<\/p>\n

The eldest son steps forward and says, \u2018Don\u2019t go back to sleep Dad, everybody else has just woken up too!\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Singapore \u2018looks like a major metropolis, but remains a small island at heart<\/a>\u2019 and the small island is agog and agape at the stunning events across the causeway<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Malaysia\u2019s political tsunami<\/a> on 9\u00a0May isn\u2019t just making history, but is rearranging how history is understood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dr Mahathir Mohamad\u2019s place in history is being re-made at speed. Malaysia\u2019s fourth and longest-serving prime minister (1981\u20132003) is now its seventh\u00a0PM. And the seventh\u00a0PM has pledged to undo much of the fourth\u00a0PM\u2019s institutional legacy while trying simultaneously to defend his personal legacy.<\/p>\n

The sleeper joke chimes with me because when I arrived in Singapore as the ABC\u2019s Southeast Asia correspondent in January\u00a01989, there was a lot of speculation about the leadership succession timetables for those two entrenched leaders, Mahathir and Lee Kuan Yew.<\/p>\n

In 1989, Dr M had just had a heart-bypass operation. Leaving aside wry surprise in KL that Mahathir actually had a heart, how much longer could he go? Well, that bypass lasted 18\u00a0years<\/a> before Dr M had another bypass. He\u2019s also had a few heart attacks. Whatever the state of his heart, the defining feature of the oldest national leader in the world is his will to power.<\/p>\n

Back in 1989, Lee Kuan Yew had a succession plan for his son, Lee Hsien Loong, just as he had a success scheme for Singapore. LKY stepped down as leader in\u00a01990, handing the prime ministership to Goh Chok Tong. But Lee stayed in cabinet\u2014and stayed as the power monitoring the power. In\u00a01990, LKY\u2019s agonising choice between beloved country and beloved son was made in favour of the beloved country. The beloved son had to wait a further 14\u00a0years before he became the third prime minister of the beloved country.<\/p>\n

Today Prime Minister Lee, like his father, is edging slowly<\/a> towards that moment when he hands control of the family business to someone who isn\u2019t a family member. The choice of Singapore\u2019s fourth prime minister will be made, as always, by a Lee. Dynasties and democracies, though, are a volatile mix.<\/p>\n

Asia well understands that dynasties in business or politics can be a major force multiplier\u2014until that moment when the dynastic line falters or overreaches.<\/p>\n

The case in dramatic point today is Najib Razak, the defeated Malaysian prime minister. Najib, too, is the son of a prime minister, so the born-to-rule sensibility of dynastic inheritance was added to the hubris of leading the party in power for 61\u00a0years.<\/p>\n

In taking up the reins again, Mahathir is giving Singapore some characteristic flicks. The biggest lash of the whip is Dr M\u2019s decision to scrap the deal to build a high-speed railway between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.<\/p>\n

The sharpest reminder of Mahathir\u2019s sardonic force, delivered via a Financial Times<\/em><\/a> interview, was his taunt about what Malaysia\u2019s revolution will mean in Singapore: \u2018I think the people of Singapore, like the people in Malaysia, must be tired of having the same government, the same party since independence.\u2019<\/p>\n

Discard the old memories of Mahathir as the champion of distinctive Asian values, of strong government based on hierarchy and respect. That\u2019s all so last century. Meet today\u2019s Mahathir, the champion of democracy in all its glorious unpredictability.<\/p>\n

Singapore has a long history of dealing with Mahathir, and his character certainly hasn\u2019t changed. But this is Mahathir intent on dismantling much of the history he created.<\/p>\n

Part of the strange symbiosis of Malaysia and Singapore was that neither democracy ever voted to change its soft-authoritarian government. That mirror image of a party holding permanent power has shattered.<\/p>\n

Mahathir is back. How much longer can Lee stay?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The joke of the week in Singapore: A Singapore man goes to bed in May\u00a01988 and sleeps for three decades. In May\u00a02018, he awakes to be astonished by the length of his beard and the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":39661,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[102,50],"class_list":["post-39660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-malaysia","tag-singapore"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMalaysia and Singapore: dreams and nightmares | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/malaysia-and-singapore-dreams-and-nightmares\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Malaysia and Singapore: dreams and nightmares | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The joke of the week in Singapore: A Singapore man goes to bed in May\u00a01988 and sleeps for three decades. 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