SINGAPORE — The man who once gave lectures to the West and its leaders is back again regaling his captive Malaysian audience with his trademark rhetoric.
Those who have crossed swords with former Malaysian Premier Mahathir Mohammad and are familiar with his unconventional combative style can attest that those confrontations, as unpleasant as they may have been, also had the unintended consequence of canonizing the man within his nation.
No better understanding of Mahathir and his methods is better enunciated than the insights he gives in a critique he wrote for TIME magazine in 1999 where he extolled the virtues of unorthodoxy.