The next phase of progress in Malaysia requires a whole set of different skills and assumptions. What once worked will no longer be so, indeed they become obstacles. Special privileges may have once been successful in improving the lot of bumiputeras, but clearly that programme has now "maxed out". Unchanged it will be more hindrance than help.

At the 2001 Umno General Assembly you (Dr Mahathir) once again saw fit to publicly castigate and upbraid Malays for not measuring up. You sermonised, cajoled, begged, and even cried to make us change our ways, but in the end none of that worked, or so you believe.

After leading us for over two decades you still feel that we have not changed or successfully adapted to modern ways. At that assembly you used exactly the same derogatory language against us as you did 30 years earlier in your book The Malay Dilemma.

All too often when your policies fail, your knee-jerk reaction is to immediately blame the people. You never cease to derogate us. Not once do you pause to ponder that maybe, just maybe, it is your policies and strategies that are wrong. Had you done so, your policies would have been more imaginative, their implementation more creative, and the results more to your expectations.

Contrary to your perception, we Malays have changed. If I may respectfully suggest, it is you who have not. You still insist on leading us in the same old ways. Excuse my brazenness; I suggest that instead of continually berating and scolding us, you try a different tack. Liberate us. Give us more freedom to be ourselves. Grant us our merdeka (independence). You have tried everything else and in your estimation, they have failed. Empower us instead.

There will be some of us who will make mistakes and fall by the wayside, but I can assure you that many more will succeed. When they do, reward them appropriately, not so much to encourage them (success is reward enough, they do not need a pat on the back from politicians and leaders) but to encourage others to emulate them.

Make them the new role models and national heroes. For those unfortunate few who fail, if you cannot offer them encouragement, then just shut up. Let their failures be reminders to them and to others.

Mediocrity rewarded

All too often you have rewarded mediocre Malays. You are easily mesmerised by the glibness of others. You listen only to those who are eager to tell you what you want to hear. You have been had. I need not remind you of the agonising pain your many chosen proteges have caused you and the nation. Anwar Ibrahim is only the most prominent and most hurtful. There are many more as you are now finding out, much to your sorrow.

Had you cast your net far and deep, you would have avoided this predicament. We will never know where and when the next spark of genius will arise. One thing we do know from experience: Malay leaders right from the sultan in Hikayat Abdullah times to the present are poor spotters of talent.

Your own considerable leadership capability was long ignored. Indeed there was a time when you were considered a disruptive element, or worse, a derhaka (traitor). Only the wisdom and foresight of your predecessors Tun Abdul Razak and Hussein Onn saved you. Had the Tunku been as ruthless as you are today with your opponents, your fate would have been far different. More significantly, so too would that of the nation.

While your fawning ministers (and wannabe ministers) may still dutifully praise you when you castigate and chastise us, I am deeply offended. Significantly, the rest of Malaysia merely yawn, they have heard those same lectures once too often.

What is particularly galling is that while you continually badger us to change, you yourself are stuck in your own feudal mentality and kampung (village) ways. While you with nauseating frequency exhort us to be thrifty and frugal, your own ostentatious lifestyles and other vulgar displays of wealth grate on us.

Your "People's Palace" at Putrajaya makes the White House a mere mansion. You lecture our young to opt for science, but you cannot even convince your own children to do likewise. You hector us to be berdikari (self reliant), but your kin and kind are the first to hog the public trough. You are not even embarrassed that your children are receiving scholarships and subsidised study loans. You decry "money politics"; alas, Umno degenerated into its present graft-ridden and patronage-laden culture while under your watch.

Malaysia enjoys unprecedented economic growth and spectacular improvement in its standard of living under your leadership. With prosperity comes greater tolerance. Under a different set of circumstances, our race alchemy could have easily exploded into another Bosnia. Instead, Malaysia today is a model plural society, a tribute to your enlightened stewardship.

These together with your economic management (recent economic setbacks notwithstanding) are worthy achievements with few comparisons. No leader could achieve such extraordinary feats without the implicit trust and consent of his followers.

Such consent and trust however, are not without limits. And having experienced such superlative achievements, Malaysians would not now settle for mere satisfactory performances. Expectations have rightly risen. Unfortunately you do not sense this and continue to preach the same sermon.

Brilliant surgeon

Yet I do not give up hope. It is within you to make changes when you feel you need to. Who would have thought a Malay ultra (chauvinist) of the 1960s would now command such wide and genuine support from non-Malays?

More recently you took the most painful step in firing your long-anointed successor. You paid a steep political price with that courageous act; history may well regard that to be your greatest contribution. Anwar is an Islamic fundamentalist masquerading as a secularist; his policies would have been disastrous for multiracial Malaysia. You saved the nation.

Likewise you have successfully nursed the nation back to its economic health. And you did so by defying the conventional wisdom. Your earlier defiance brought much condemnation and ridicule; your later success, much praise and yes, also awe.

I too revel in that reflected glory of your success. You remind me of the brilliant surgeon who skillfully managed the life-threatening complication in his patient. Everyone was suitably impressed and in awe of his virtuoso performance. That is until someone one quietly asks that basic question, "Doctor, how did your patient get that complication in the first place?"

Yes, you saved the nation both politically and economically. And yes, Malaysians are grateful for your brilliant deeds. Much as I praise your successful salvage operations, the gnawing questions remain. How did Anwar get to be where he was? How could you and the system allow such a flawed character to rise so far and so fast? Likewise, how could a mere currency speculator nearly cripple the country's economy?

Today you are busy attending to the nation's business. Rightly so, but I do hope that you ponder these questions and answer them in your memoirs. Subsequent generations need to learn the lesson. In the remaining years you must concentrate not on party or policy, but on personnel. You once quipped that you would like to be succeeded by your clone. Alas, there is no young Mahathir out there. Sadly, this more than anything else is the most glaring failure of your leadership.

Talent scouting

Finding the next cadre of leaders will not be easy. While previous generations were inspired by the struggle for freedom, no such inspirations exist now. Today's young Mahathirs, if they have not already succumbed to the lures of the First World, are busy pitting their talent in the highly lucrative private sector.

You must make a personal and concerted effort at talent scouting. Fortunately, again thanks to the successes of your policies, there are many capable Malaysians. Finding them would not be difficult, but enticing them into public service would be the challenge. There will be a few who, having reached the peak of their career and having put aside a comfortable nest egg, would consider public service a noble calling.

Grab them. Under your masterful tutelage, these fast learners would grasp the political skills soon enough. You will also find them to be a different breed from the ones currently serving you.

Should you restrict yourself to your party, there will be slim pickings. Your record at talent scouting thus far, to put it charitably, is less than spectacular. You had better luck recently with your choice of a new chief justice in the person of Mohamed Dzaiddin Abdullah. That one wise pick did more to enhance the judiciary than all your speeches. This should remind you of the importance of personnel.

The legacy of a parent is their children; a leader his successor. There is ample time yet for you to enhance your legacy and with it, to secure the nation's future.

You have repeatedly grumbled about the lack of Malays in business, and just as predictably, you have denigrated Malay aptitude for and competence in commerce. I again respectfully suggest that you have it all wrong.

Malays are indeed shrewd businessmen, Malaysian style that is. The role models you have provided them have been the Halim Saads and Tajuddin Ramlis. These individuals are handsomely rewarded not for their expertise or entrepreneuralism, rather on their coziness with you.

Other budding entrepreneurs learn quickly that to succeed they too need not pay attention to their clients and customers but suck up to the politically powerful. The road to riches in Malaysia is not through creating and building, but getting the right contacts and contracts. You have created a class not of builders and creators, but of rent collectors and parasites.

You frequently lament the evils of money politics. You have now finally admitted the obvious: Umno is corrupt to the core. It is no longer only a political party, but a massive and insatiably greedy patronage system.

You were shocked that in the last election only non-Malays appreciated your brilliant stewardship. Malays were, to paraphrase you, stupid and ungrateful. It finally dawned on you that your party has lost the support of Malays. It took you and your fellow party leaders this long to appreciate this fact, as the loss was reflected in the reduced number of parliamentary seats your party won.

You were shrewd enough to spare your party a humiliating thrashing through smart political manoeuvring. You wisely called the election just before thousands of newly registered young and disillusioned voters became eligible. Others may carp but I salute your brilliant political move. Such tricks however, only work once.

It is my contention that Malays voted for PAS not because they were enamoured with that party or that they were impressed with its leadership, rather they were fed up with the corruption (or money politics, as you euphemistically phrase it) of Umno.

Humiliation for Umno

The next election will be different. If your party does not change radically, there will be an implosion. Although I predict that your party will again return to power, it will be denied its two-thirds majority. Umno will suffer the humiliation of winning fewer seats than PAS. To add insult to injury, your home state of Kedah will fall to PAS. Your long-held Kubang Pasu seat, should you not contest it, will also go to the opposition.

Nothing would please me more than to be proven wrong. Perversely the 9/11 terrorists' attacks on America could prove to be your and your party's saviour. No, it has nothing to do with your swift condemnation of those abominable acts you were absolutely right in quickly denouncing those despicable terrorists.

Rather, it has everything to do with the unbelievably stupid reactions of PAS leaders. I have never been impressed with the senior leadership of that party, and their behaviour following those horrible tragedies merely confirmed my worst suspicion of them. I have every reason to believe that they will continue their present pattern. But it would take more than the floundering of PAS to reverse the fate of your party.

Malaysians have changed and you can rightfully claim credit for many of those changes. But you are now like an insecure mother who does not notice the subtle changes in her brood, and continue to force-feed the same pablum to her fully grown children. And when they protest or rebel, she puts on a guilt trip about ingratitude. Wise parents recognise that the reprimands that work in childhood are counterproductive on teenagers and grownups.

Instead of continually berating us, I suggest that you provide us with the necessary ladders and safety net. With enough ladders our people will climb up without your having to exhort them. With an adequate safety net below they will be further emboldened.

But do not repeat the mistakes of Western democracies by making too elaborate a social safety net. Too comfortable a safety net and it becomes a hammock, and Malaysians would then succumb to our own version of the "British disease" of social welfarism rampant during the pre-Thatcher era. In many ways our special privileges are doing that now to bumiputeras. The programmes are becoming too cushy; they lull instead of invigorating Malays.

Emphasise our assets

One such ladder would be an excellent school system and relevant curricula. We must make all our young fluently bilingual, science literate, and mathematically competent, whether they want to be a scientist or an alim (pious person). You have concentrated on physical infrastructures in the past. Now I implore you to emphasise our most precious assets our people. You are mighty proud of our airport being among the best, we should likewise aim for our universities and schools to be the same.

You never miss to take foreign visitors to see your new pride and joy, the Petronas Twin Towers. Sadly, the only thing Malaysian about that monument is the land on which it is built. Everything else, from the design to the laying of the bricks, was done by foreigners. Wouldn't it be nice if our universities and research centres too were of such eminence that foreigners would want to visit them?

You have repeatedly reminded us of Allah's bounty on our land. Not only are we spared many of nature's calamities, we are also blessed with some of the richest resources. Our warm waters and pristine beaches are the envy of the world; they would be prime tourist destinations especially for those from the West.

You repeatedly sent trade missions to the West to drum up potential investments. But we cannot begin to attract tourists or investors if we continually denigrate their culture. We have enough problems of our own culture; there is no need for us to lecture others. Besides, they have their own critics who are much more eloquent and effective. Quit worrying about the degeneration of the West and concentrate instead on Malaysia's problems.

So the next time you address us, consider this. If you think that we have not changed under your leadership for the past 20 years, it is unlikely that we would ever do so in the few remaining years you have. Relent. Encourage us instead; it might just work. Do not besmirch your wonderful legacy by having us remember you as other than an esteemed leader.


This essay is the last chapter of Dr M BAKRI MUSA's book Malaysia in the Era of Globalization, published in June 2002. The author is a surgeon in Silicon Valley, California. He has a previous book, The Malay Dilemma Revisited: Race Dynamics in Modern Malaysia.