The four-days in Kuala Lumpur made him revise his views in his interview with the New Sunday Times, realising soon after he arrived that the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, could not sustain his rule so long as his nemesis fought the hard fight and is now the political icon of the opposition parties, especially PAS. The high moral tone of mainstream newspaper editorials and comment reflected Mr Lee's quick realisation that the administration is out of touch with its Malay cultural hinterland, and raised the prospect of a future government led other than by the National Front. That the published comments discomfitted the administration is in no doubt.

The Malays in the audience, and elsewhere, could not take umbrage at what he said, however distasteful. He referred to his government's difficulties with bringing the Malays in Singapore into the mainstream, shaking his head at having to bring them kicking and screaming out of their reluctance to break out of their millieu. This reflected his amazement that the Malay, with Islam as his guiding principle, prefers to move at his own pace, globalisation or not. He kept pointing out the differences between North East Asia of Confucian states, and the Southeast Asia of Muslim states, how in one the East Asian crisis of 1997-1998 was an opportunity to reform, in the other an occasion to react in shock and reel into their cultural coccoon. But his views also reflected his inability to understand the Islamic mind, more so the Malay.

The newspapers reported his critical comments on the Prime Minister, his errors of judgement vis-a-vis the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the credibility gap between his administration and its electorate. Malaysians got to read of critical comments by a visiting foreign leader for the first time in years, especially in the mainstream media. The Prime Minister's tenuous hold on the administration suffered even more after his critical comments, trapped as he is in a quagmire of his own making. It is no more, Mr Lee suggested, a David-and-Goliath struggle, but one between Athens and Sparta.

His public comments, at the same time, warned the Chinese community about not putting all their eggs into the Mahathir and National Front basket. Not just to those in Malaysia, but in Singapore as well. And subtly hinted to the Malays in Malaysia that bilateral ties come from a perceived understanding of the other's perspective, and the absolutes in a binding contract. He still does not understand the Malay perspective, but accepts it is here to stay, and therefore to be dealt with frontally. Whather that is wise is a different matter altogether.

The divisiveness the Anwar affair cast on the Malay landscape, made worse by a leader's misjudgements, shook him most. His comments made clear the leaders are disbelieved, could not understand the need for a government to re-enact an arms heist that offered little but derision. Even more alarming to him is the Malay's ingrained sense of feudal justice, in which the feudal leader may kill, but never humiliate, a territorial chief, that this more than any other drives him in its opposition to the Prime Minister.

But then, Mr Lee never understood the Malay community. He regards, or at least did at one time, the Malays in Singapore as a fifth column for the Malays in Malaysia, as UMNO believes, or once did, the Chinese in the peninsula are to the PAP. The two races, and the two countries, moved in opposite political directions after Singapore left the federation in 1965, but the inherent xenophobia, however masked by political realities or education, comes to the fore, often for the most irrelevant of reasons, to frustrate bilateral relations.

Officials viewed Mr Lee's schoolmasterly tone even offensive, but his statements struck a sympathetic chord amongst the younger, more educated, less pro-government Malays who resent their government's insistence on life-long gratefulness, tying them to an outmoded policy that tries to put the genie back into the bottle. It is a Malaysia Singapore would have to come to terms with. The two countries would soon have leaders who do not have a shared past. Officials in both say this could be a harbinger of more problems. Mr Lee takes great pains to point out that once the leaders of the two countries could get on the phone to speak to his college mate, Tun Abdul Razak, then Malaysian prime minister. He did not have that relationship with Tun Razak's successors. Neither do the younger ministers.

But a shared past need not ensure a shared future. Singapore left the federation despite the personal equation the leaders of the two countries had with each other. I dare say that if Mr Lee had the wisdom then he has now, Singapore could well have remained in the federation. Little discussed within the ambit of Mr Lee's remarks is the state of bilateral ties. That remains equivocal as ever, with no movement expected so long as the Prime Minister is in office: he has much weightier problems of political survival.

Mr Lee did not talk about this, but deep in his intellectual firmament must be the realisation that the political Malay in the future, with no shared ties, would be more than a match for a largely Chinese administration in Singapore whose manufactured patriotism presumes an unnamed enemy to strengthen it within a computerised mindset. The Singapore Chinese's Malay Dilemma is as serious as the Malaysian Malay's Chinese Dilemma. Much as he would discount it now, he cannot, as the Malay cannot, of a possible reunion of the two countries in the distant future. But not while the present political leaders in both countries are still around.