Dr Mahathir Mohamad is gone, but 17 years too late for Malaysia. His supporters, however, will argue the undeniable truth of his personal role in making Malaysia a world 'success story'. They'll point to the longest (Penang) bridge that made South Korean contractors rich while filling government coffers X-times more than the bridge's final cost. There's the North-South highway, another cash cow for a state-protected monopoly and the government's coffers; the Multimedia Super Corridor, even if it's half dead; the apparently state-of-the-art new airport, operating well under capacity, and never mind the disgusting state of the public toilets.

There's the world's tallest, and half-empty, Petronas Twin Towers; the world's highest flagpole for the world's biggest flag, with a name all its own; the F1 race track, events at which few ordinary Malaysians can afford, costing taxpayers US$75 million, only to be bailed out by Petronas, the state-owned oil company. Malaysian Airline System, once state-owned, was 'privatised' to a state-protected crony, who ran it into the ground, before it was 're-nationalised' at a cost well above its real market price. Then there's Mahathir's US$8 billion Putrayaja fairyland, his Pearly Gates his office alone cost Malaysian taxpayers US$1.32 billion but it's heavily fortressed and barely accessible to the people. And there are the monorail projects, also awarded to Mahathir's capitalist cronies, without competitive tender.

The latest project, with a strong whiff of another mega scandal brewing, is the US$3.82 billion 636km north-south electrified dual rail-track system. It's a system all right. It was suddenly awarded to the consortium of Gamuda-Malaysian Mining Corporation (MMC is owned by Mahathir's newest and most favoured crony, Syed Mokhtar Albukhary) but after letters of intent went to firms from India and China. There's a litany of Mahathir's other politically favoured or pet projects that have massively enriched the state's cronies, including Mahathir's policy farces, fiascos and scandals and his disgraceful behaviour.

Yet the world is told that these mega-projects symbolise Mahathir having single-handedly transformed, modernised and industrialised Malaysia, without the man once putting a foot wrong. Mahathir is also credited with policies that had long been in place before he became premier in 1981. To his supporters that didn't matter. Much of Malaysia's economic change has been the result of the confluence of geopolitics and geoeconomics borne by the Cold War in East Asia and an over-dependence on state-backed exports and exports by multinational companies in Malaysia to the world biggest market, the United States.

Leader worship

Lionizing Mahathir is unsurprising given the lineage of the cult-like compulsion in Malaysia to leader worship. It's as fatuous as the ex-leader himself. That tendency is rooted in the Malaysian psyche. Its origins are found in Malaysia's primordialism and state-nurtured class coalitions that cut across racial lines in the ethnically divided nation. When tensions of a class nature arise, the government's immediate response is always to reduce them to conspiratorial racial issues, if not conspiratorial neo-imperialists. It's the only way it can justify more state repression, such as by harking back to the racial violence in 1969 or to its colonial past.

Mahathir's devotees, especially within Malaysia's appalling state-controlled media, seem incapable of offering more balanced and critical assessments beyond the obvious, like labelling Mahathir's premiership as being unquestionably his and Malaysia's 'success' story. Full stop. It's a style of argument reminiscent of the halcyon debates by orthodox economists, culturalists and others on the giddy rise of the Asian economic 'miracles' by virtue of the free market and the inexorable superiority of 'Asian values'.

But history has proved both to be bunk. Then, as now, none saw, among other things, the mountains of debt that had financed the 'miracles', subsequently underscoring the problems that exploded in 1997 and which imploded Asia as spectacularly as their rapid ascendance. Moreover, 'miracles' and 'success' were neither qualified nor defined, except through use of the usual symbols like the spurious per capita income measures and a few world-record skyscrapers and flagpoles. Their arguments were presented as the Holy Grail. Likewise Mahathir's 'success', especially when compared to the string of serious problems Mahathir has left to his successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Reformist 'Mahathirism' was always a sleight of hand. Political 'Mahathirism' never had any moral virtues. 'Mahathirism' hadn't any ideological coherence or intellectual prodigy. Neither was 'Mahathirism' an ingenious explanation of his rule in Malaysia nor that of modern Malaysian politics and the economy. His over-hyped economic 'doctrine' was mostly equipped with an insipid economic nationalism, entrenched only in his personal populism and the much-discredited neo-Marxist theories of dependency and imperialism. Malaysia's integration into the capitalist world economy, its industrial trajectory and its modernisation lay bare the falsities of Mahathir's 'nationalism' as no more than his sanctimonious cant, xenophobic hysteria, his shiftiness and his deception.

Policy flaws

Mahathir's 'legacy' stems from his many policy flaws and contradictions and his abuse of political power, all of which will have long-term consequences, albeit unintended, for the political, social and economic life of the nation. Thankfully Mahathir has gone permanently, one would hope. Abdullah, however, has his hands full in undoing much of Mahathir's outrageous agendas that have scandalously wasted so much national wealth and its siphoning by his cronies, with his regime's blessing. The costs of Mahathir's mismanagement will be widely socialised for years to come. In this Abdullah has a choice: he can clearly choose to ignore criticism of Mahathir's excesses, or he can choose to correct those costly blunders.

Mahathir is now irrelevant, but those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. Already Abdullah has said, even before taking over as Malaysia's fifth prime minister, that he intends to continue with Mahathir's policies. That's most worrying. Is another anti-reformist premier emerging in Malaysia? Or perhaps Abdullah had to say this while living in Mahathir's shadow. Nonetheless, Abdullah must step out definitively if he's to become his own person. If Malaysia is to truly progress, including emotionally and intellectually, it must start at the top. Banning books of horror stories plainly shows the ignorance and immaturity of Malaysian ministers, politicians and policymakers. There are new clothes for emperor Abdullah but, first, he must want change.

Tomorrow: Pak Lah: Seriously altered stakes

MANJIT BHATIA is managing director of AsiaRisk - a political and economic research and risk analysis consultancy in Australia. The writer specialises in international economics and politics and the Asia-Pacific region.