Off the Cuff - Malaysia-Singapore ties looking up

I'M glad to be back after missing the deadlines for this column for a couple of weeks as I have been doing some hectic travelling in the last month or so.
I was in Ankara and Istanbul in Turkey, on an invitation from the Turkish Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, for a week where officials gave briefings on what actually happened before and after the country's July 15 failed military coup.
Turkey underwent such coup at a rate of once every 10 years in the last few decades with the military taking over power but this time around, the sheer power of millions of people who poured into the streets crushed the coup.
Officials said had the coup succeeded, Turkey would have ended up as another Syria.
After Turkey, I was in Marrakech, Morocco, with the Malaysian delegation for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, which saw the biggest gathering of over 190 countries to underscore how serious the world is in tackling the threat of global warming.
And on Monday I was nearer home in Singapore for an exclusive interview with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
I have interviewed a countless number of leaders and other personalities in my long career as a journalist but this latest one certainly will leave such a lasting impression.
As far as I know, it's the first time that a Malaysian journalist has interviewed any prime minister of Singapore, our closest neighbour, and which was once part of Malaysia but since separation in 1965 has left all countries in Southeast Asia and beyond behind to take its place as a first world nation.
Singapore's progress and transformation over the past few decades is nothing short of amazing with its symbol of pride being its world-class education system and status as an almost corrupt-free nation.
There is something special about Singapore and Malaysia, which perhaps does not happen anywhere else in the world. Both Lee and our Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak are sons of contemporary prime ministers of both countries at one time in the past.
This is a unique backdrop which forms the basis for why our bilateral ties with Singapore under Lee and Najib are on their best ever footing in recent history.
For the record, relations were very testy as well as rocky especially during the 22 years of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad's leadership, which on hindsight, to me as a keen observer, simply boiled down to the fact that Dr Mahathir had not once given Singapore credit for anything, let alone its success story.
Both he and Singapore founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, had been quite tough on each other, too, and this was due to their long history of personality clashes in Malaysian politics dating back to the time of Singapore's brief two years as part of Malaysia from 1963.
"It's a point in common that we share and sometimes we swap notes of what it was like to be the children of former prime ministers. It is a positive factor because it means that both of us have had environments where we have been focused on this bilateral relationship for a very large part of our lives. We know how important it is and we would like to make it better, which I think we are not doing badly," Lee told me on Monday.
These remarks truly reflect Lee's humility. In fact, I would say it is an understatement for the tremendous strides that both he and Najib have scored since taking over the helm of government.
"We are happy for it. I have a very good relationship with Najib and we hope to do more with Malaysia," he said, setting the tone for his upcoming annual so-called retreat meeting with our prime minister expected to take place in Iskandar, Johor Baru sometime this month.
The elephant in the room right now as far as both countries are concerned is the High Speed Rail (HSR) linking Kuala Lumpur and Singapore that has been preoccupying leaders and officials on both sides for more than year now.
And Lee took the opportunity during my interview to reiterate how important it is to strike a "sound agreement" on how the HSR is structured, executed and backed by both governments.
The project, as he puts it, is " very ambitious, very complicated and very expansive" and cost-sharing of its construction is one of the things that makes it complicated just like the London to Paris Channel Tunnel.
"When you have two authorities involved, you have to decide how to partition, where the line is drawn. I build my part, you build your part, and we have to meet at the same point. If it does not meet then we have a big problem," he said.
This the first time that Lee has been so frank in assessing this game changer of a project for both countries that will cut travel time to just 90 minutes from about four to five hours by car or bus.
"We are almost there, and I hope that when I meet Najib at the next retreat, we will be able to sign the agreement," said Lee.
He admitted that one "very difficult decision" pending would be on evaluating which of the bidders for its construction; among Japanese, Korean and Chinese high-speed rail systems, would be the best overall and would get this biggest-in-history project.
I and a few other fellow editors had on a few occasions been privileged to be invited to meet up with Lee Kuan Yew on his visits here and of course frequently with our former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir.
Both men did not indulge in small talk with journalists especially Dr Mahathir whose attitude with us has always been characteristically impersonal. We accept it because that's Dr Mahathir.
But Lee Hsien Loong is so humble and friendly. He asked whether I came to Singapore that day itself or a day earlier and whether I would be meeting some other people as well while in Singapore.
And he asked why both TV cameras were focused on him alone and none on me.
Actually there were two other cameras from Bernama News Channel that were trained on me.
After the 30-minute interview was over, I gave the prime minister a copy of a book that was given to me in Penang just two days earlier by Tan Sri Yussof Latiff, chairman of the Penang Goodwill Consultative Council.
It's a collection of fond remembrances of our first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman by close friends that included British expatriates who once served in pre-independent Malaya.
One of them, who later became Lord Ogmore, wrote that the Tunku, whom he said was a good cook, once cooked curry rice for some British ministers at Lord Ogmore's house in London while he and Lee Kuan Yew were there for talks on the formation of Malaysia with British officials.
Lee acted as Tunku's assistant cook and both were wearing aprons and Ogmore wrote that the then Singapore prime minister's task was chopping onions and preparing the condiments for the curry dish.
Lee Hsien Loong read that particular paragraph in the book and with a tinge of emotion told me: "Thank you very much for this heart-warming story of my dad".
It was very touching of the Singapore prime minister to have mentioned my interview with him on his Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday as well as posting the entire transcript of the interview.
The prime minister's office also released the full transcript of the interview to the Singapore media.
Thank you, prime minister.