BY HAU BOON LAI

Here's a ringside seat to one author's chats with Singapore's ex-PM and current Minister Mentor.

CITIZEN SINGAPORE: HOW TO BUILD A NATION

Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew (Giants of Asia Series)

By Tom Plate

Publisher: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 216 pages

ISBN: 978-9812616760

IT'S tempting to group Tom Plate together with Western journalists who engage in "parachute journalism" in Asia - enter a country for three, four days to report on situations that they have little knowledge about, and churn out stories filled with the stereotypes and clich?s that appear to be their only source of information.

Plate, however, is not quite your typical Western journalist. The former Los Angeles Times' op-ed editor has not only blown the Asian trumpet in a series of columns for many years, he has also done so in an obviously knowledgeable way.

In return, it seems, he has been granted unprecedented access to Asian leaders and is reportedly on a first-name basis with a number of them.

Plate was recently gifted with four hours over two days with Lee Kuan Yew to write a book that aims to tell the "true story" of the former prime minister and now Minister Mentor of Singapore.

Despite having "spent more aggregative time with LKY than any Western journalist", Plate is aware from the get-go of the seemingly irreconcilable difference between what Lee wants - tell my story, warts and all, to those who wish to know me better - and what Plate wants - to help Americans understand Lee better.

The result is that much of this book focuses on issues that are common knowledge among those who are familiar with Lee - China, India, Indonesia, radical Islam, his controversial views on eugenics and his pragmatic politics that focuses on results, not theories.

This has happened despite the fact that Lee had told the author early on in the interview that Singaporeans "think they know me, but they only know the public me" in what was surely an invitation, or at the very least an acceptance of the need, for Plate to enter Lee's private parlour for the book.

However, Plate doesn't take up Lee's invitation, passing off his refusal as a desire not to engage in "the tacky tabloid-magazine drill" of trivialising Lee's life. But this, of course, means that Plate cannot provide new insights into the real Lee Kuan Yew.

For instance, at the time of the interviews, Mrs Lee, nee Kwa Geok Choo, was "gravely ill" and in hospital; Plate could have asked Lee about his close and affectionate relationship with his wife of 60 years but doesn't.

And for all his claims as a representative of the Western tradition of human rights, democracy and the freedom of speech, Plate dents his credibility somewhat when he admits that he allowed Lee to take "a few things out, not wanting to embarrass Singapore" - that is not quite in the spirit of letting the "chips fall where they may".

Furthermore, in concentrating on uncovering the philosophical plane upon which Lee operates and pegging it down for American readers, Plate did not do his journalistic duty of asking the difficult follow-up questions required when Lee presents him with valuable new nuggets of political history.

So when Lee tells Plate that he had talked three ministers out of quitting the Cabinet within six months of Goh Chok Tong taking over as Singapore's second Prime Minister in 1990, there was no follow-up on who those ministers were and why this account differed from the conventional wisdom that Goh was popularly chosen by his colleagues to lead them.

The book is right, though, in labelling Lee a "Giant of Asia" and a fascinating subject. Citizen Singapoire is also valuable because it is a condensed, much more manageable account of the man and his ideas than the two blockbuster books - The Singapore Story and From Third World to First: The Singapore Story - that comprise Lee's memoirs and that were published in 1998 and 2000.

Citizen Singapore is a great introductory book for people belonging to the Internet age and used to short, handy tomes that can be finished in a day; and it might well find a whole new audience of younger readers in Asia as well as new Western readers who would appreciate Plate's breezy, informal style of writing that provides them a ringside seat to his chats with Lee Kuan Yew.