Many often ask why I am so obsessed with Mahathir Mohamad? Can’t I just let go of him?

I wish I could, but I can’t.

Frankly speaking, I am least troubled by whatever that is written by Awang Selamat and his cohorts at Utusan Malaysia . After all, the circulation of the Umno mouthpiece has dwindled dramatically over the years. It now sells around 160,000 copies, compared to close to 300,000 a decade ago.

azlan It takes a principled journalist by the name of Hata Wahari, also president of the National Union of Journalists, to remind the Utusan top management that racist rhetoric has caused the daily’s declining sales.

Like the People’s Daily in China, Utusan is a newspaper read predominantly in government offices as well as government-linked companies - provided it gets read at all. Minus all these compulsory subscriptions, the actual circulation could be half of what we are told.

Hence, one needs not react so hysterically to a vessel of racism that is already on its deathbed.

NONE The same cannot be said of Mahathir. The formidable ex-prime minister still commands a huge following both within Umno and across the country, testified by the brisk sale of his memoirs and the beelines of admirers to have his autograph. Even a large number of non-Malays are sincerely fond of him and his ‘magic hands’ that produced Malaysia’s erstwhile economic wonders.

Simply put, ignore Mahathir at one’s peril.

In the aftermath of the Sarawak state election, Mahathir sarcastically congratulated the DAP on the latter’s splendid performance and success in “bringing its racist politics into Sarawak”.

A wounded man badly in need of love

As I have written before, Mahathir is a wounded man who is badly in need of all the love that he can find. Although in his 80s, the pains and sorrows that he suffered as a child continue to freeze him in time and hinder him from growing up emotionally. His understanding of ethnic relations best exemplify this defective nature of his.

Let’s assume Mahathir’s purported love for his own community - the Malays - is genuine. There is nothing wrong when one chooses to pay particular attention to one’s own kin. Does it make him a racist?

NONE It does, provided his ‘love’ is premised on two things: first, that the Malays are inherently weak while others are not. The man who shot to stardom with The Malay Dilemma and admits to still believing in much of his arguments today needs no further elaboration when it comes to essentialising the Malays.

Deep down his heart, Mahathir sees the Malays as helplessly mired in bottomless misery, which calls for their ‘salvation’. In other words, the Malays are The Brown Man’s Burden.

Second, that the expression of Mahathir’s love and concerns for the Malays is at the expense of others’ well-being. More than two decades of Mahathir’s administration failed to lift much of the Indians and the indigenous communities out of abject poverty.

Unlike Nelson Mandela who has dedicated his remaining years to keeping the rainbow nation of South Africa together, Mahathir responded to the needs of the non-Malay populations with marketisation, as argued by Liew Chin Tong, the Member of Parliament for Bukit Bendera, at a recent forum.

education01 After the 1990 general election, Mahathir knew full well the issue of education must be resolved. Since he had always been convinced that the non-Malays were better off and could afford anything, he permitted the private sector to co-run higher education in an unprecedented manner. As we now realise, the flourishing of private education over the last two decades has only aggravated the plight of the poor and worsened social divisions.

Did one ever hear Mahathir speak up for the downtrodden Indians or Orang Asli? I never did. Correct me if I am wrong.

Mahathir would vehemently deny he is a racist. But he deserves a full rebuttal in his face that sole focus on one’s own race does not a statesman make. So long as Mahathir refuses to acknowledge there are poor people among the non-Malays, he is a racist.

Likewise, any person who thinks Umno’s policy has benefited only the Malays while marginalising only the non-Malays cannot be said to have broken the racial mould.

An uneven and divisive society

The fact is: the distorted policies under Mahathir have created an uneven and divisive society, with the rich becoming richer while the poor poorer, which is a cross-ethnic reality. The ruling elites are now so addicted to making a quick buck that many urbanites can no longer afford decent housing given the skyrocketing property prices.

Mahathir will never want to face up to this because it will only sharpen his utter failure on many fronts. Instead, he will always blow his own horn as he did in his memoirs.

NONE In one of his conversations with Tom Plate ( left ), Mahathir stated rather self-assuredly that “the Chinese want to have a stable situation where they can do business”. Recently, he also said that any government plan to develop Kampung Baru, the Malay enclave in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, could not leave out the Chinese because “they can bring in money and business”.

Quite clearly, Mahathir sees ethnic relations as instrumental and materialistic in nature. He is only interested in the Chinese so long as they can ensure economic prosperity. When the Chinese start to assert their civic rights, he immediately interprets it as a threat.

This is how he is twisting the outcome of the Sarawak state election to scare the Malay community by portraying the DAP as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Mahathir is an intelligent man and will surely come to grips with the more complex yet comprehensive post-election analysis by Bridget Welsh.

Then again, he will choose to ignore it in order to play to his racist gallery. Acknowledging that more and more Malaysians are becoming despondent at Umno’s political bullying and economic exploitation will never be his option.

But can free and fair elections, independence of the judiciary, public integrity and freedom of the press really constitute such a grave danger to Malaysian society at large? All this, properly articulated by the opposition, will only send Umno packing, and thus the myth of Mahathir’s legacy will vanish. Along with it will be a downright racist once known as the ‘Father of Modern Malaysia’.

 

 

JOSH HONG studied politics at London Metropolitan University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. A keen watcher of domestic and international politics, he longs for a day when Malaysians will learn and master the art of self-mockery, and enjoy life to the full in spite of politicians.