LETTER
Mahathir is a hypocrite
After Dr Mahathir Mohamad's latest salvo calling for the resignation of the prime minister, not much can be certain about Mahathir anymore. This is especially so given that the reasons for calling on Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to step down are premised on the inability of the government to break international law and build a crooked bridge.
However, despite the fact that Mahathir's ranting expose serious doubts about who he actually is, there are two things that emerge as definite certainties as far as the public is concerned. One, that he has served as Malaysia's prime minister for just over 22 years and two, that Mahathir is a true hypocrite.
From an endless source of examples of his hypocrisy and double standards that many, many others have pointed out, I choose two. The first is the fact that he closed down national newspapers and approved of the takeover of media companies by BN parties yet now he complains about the lack of press freedom.
The second is that he forced Petronas to save his son's failing consortium to the tune of RM1.7 billion yet now he repeatedly asks for explanations about how the current Umno Youth deputy head could persuade his business colleagues to lend him under RM10 million.
Now we know that Malaysians are very forgiving. Most ordinary Malaysians know for a fact that Mahathir is a hypocrite and that he has committed many wrongs and injustices during his time in office. However, there is an implicit feeling amongst most of us that he has realised his previous shortcomings and therefore can be a credible champion to fight against the government.
A crucial issue the rakyat has to be aware of, before crowning Mahathir as champion of democracy, etc, is what motivates a hypocrite or in other words, what is Tun's agenda? To answer this, we must turn to the other fact we know about Mahathir, apart from him being a shameless hypocrite, and this is that he was prime minister of Malaysia for 22 years.
Like any strongman ruler, Mahathir is worried about the things that are beyond his control. Chief among this is his legacy as prime minister and how generations to come will remember him. His own mortality assures that there will be a time when he cannot continue to shape his legacy via personally encouraged propaganda.
Indeed, his legacy is also why he chose Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as PM. Mahathir was under the impression that Abdullah would loyally and unquestioningly continue to implement Mahathir Mohamad policies and therefore cement Mahathir's legacy. Again, like any strongman leader, Mahathir assumed he knew best and refused to acknowledge that Malaysia's challenges were rapidly changing, therefore demanding urgent and necessary reforms.
Imagine then Mahathir's anger, when after listening to the views of ordinary people and various groups, Abdullah decided to fight a general election on issues centring on corruption and inequality besides a shift away from mega-projects. Now, imagine Mahathir's extreme bitterness when the people responded with such enthusiasm and hope.
Abdullah won a majority that Mahathir was never able to accomplish over the course of the five general elections he contested as leader of the BN. The key fact here is that Abdullah's victory was based on a set of specific relevant principles that contradicted much of Mahathir's policy priorities.
Everywhere, Mahathir's questionable legacy of 22 years is under attack. The only thing anyone can say about Mahathir's policy was that he personally devised them. Therefore, in light of Mahathir's re-emergence, it can be argued that the writing has always been on the wall. The more Abdullah pushes on with his reform agenda addressing the tragic mistakes of Mahathirism one by one, the more Mahathir will be pushed into a corner.
The more he is pushed into a corner, the louder he will become. Just look at how far Mahathir has gone, from mere grumbling about Proton disregarding his beloved Mahaleel, to the present, where he has clearly called for Abdullah's resignation. It is a sign of a desperate man, willing to sacrifice the country's political stability in pursuit of his fabricated place in history.
Mahathir will not rest easy until someone else is in power, someone else who will definitively ensure him a proud legacy which ignores the facts but builds on propaganda. It won't come as a surprise to anyone if Tun's next step is to mobilise the more corrupt and sidelined elements in Umno to mount a challenge against Abdullah's reform agenda.
Malaysians will realise in their own time - but they nevertheless will realise - that dismantling the systems that structurally integrated corruption and inequality into Malaysian society over the course of 22 long years will take Abdullah Ahmad Badawi more than one or two terms as prime minister to overcome.
It will take as long as it takes because it has to be done. Failure to change, in terms of how we think about progress and development in the 21st century, will simply mean that we will all be left behind while others surge ahead. We will then have nothing but Mahathir's actual legacy, of being a democracy without being democratic and of a 'spend-spend-spend' approach to economic growth, to sink us in even deeper.
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