He had no pretensions about his own abilities and no inhibitions in describing the capabilities of his fellow Malays. He was disarmingly frank in his self-deprecation, confessing that his Malay father, the sultan, was a weak man and that his strength came from his Thai mother. The Malays, he said, were not very clever or demanding, and therefore easy to please. All he needed was to give them a little bit more and they were quite happy. These views were similar to those expressed by Dr Mahathir Mohamad in his book The Malay Dilemma, published in 1971. He wrote, “Whatever the Malays could do the
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