Tom Plate, an American journalist, had been working on the series "Giants of Asia", the first of which was the bestseller ' Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew'.
"Doctor M : Operation Malaysia" is his second and most recent book.
Interesting and easy reading. Plate's style of writing makes you feel as if you were there listening to the conversation. Apart from a few new 'revelations' from Mahathir ( one of which was his revelation that Operation Lalang was decided upon by the police - which drew reactions from Karpal Singh and Lim Kit Siang - and which probably also set up the forum at the Parliament House recently where former IGP Tun Hanif Omar explained the situation which led to his decision to act on the Operation Lalang. Dr M also took part in that forum) - the book also gave another close-up of Mahathir, the person.
Plate asserted that despite his short-comings, Dr M's achievements could not be ignored. He felt that many in the West had made many wrong assumptions about him because they did not know him in person. Their conclusions about him had been mostly based on western media potrayals of him as just being another third-world Muslim leader with anti-Jew and anti-West attitudes. He felt that Dr M was grossly misunderstood and that the leaders from the west had missed the chance to work constructively with a modern, intelligent, progressive and moderate Muslim leader.
Pakdokter enjoyed reading Tom Plate's work and would certainly go and get the copy on Lee Kuan Yew which had also drawn comments from Dr M in his blog.
Pakdokter is still waiting for the "Memoir of Dr M"....
In the mean time, pakdokter has started reading Vaclav Havel's Memoir "To the Castle and Back" which pakdokter brought back from Prague.....
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