With Lee Kuan Yew's death, Mahathir Mohamad is the last of Southeast Asia's old guard

Two of Asia's best-known strongmen, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia's Dr Mahathir Mohamad, had much in common - a streak of authoritarianism, little tolerance for dissent and vision that changed the face of their countries.

Both Lee and Mahathir were English-educated leaders, who successfully delivered economic prosperity - to varying degrees - and gave international prominence to their countries.

But friends they were not, and the two rarely saw eye to eye. In fact, one of their few agreements was to move their countries' time - which was 71/2 hours ahead of GMT - forward by half an hour to be in line with world time zones.

"I am afraid on most other issues we could not agree … I cannot say I was a close friend of Kuan Yew, but still I feel sad at his demise," 89-year-old Mahathir wrote on his blog last month.

With Lee's death at age 91, Mahathir becomes the last of the old-guard generation in Southeast Asia, which boomed economically under their authoritarian leadership and came to be known as the "tiger economies" (Indonesia's Suharto, spoken in the same breath as these two, died in 2008).

Yet Mahathir and Lee leave vastly differing legacies.