Nizar Jamaluddin, whose 11-month administration of the Pakatan Rakat government in Perak between March 2008 and February 2009 was again attacked by Dr Mahathir Mohamad as a ‘Trojan Horse’ for Chinese domination of Malaysia, said the former prime minister was a physician in dire need of self-healing.

Mahathir has repeated what Nizar described as a “base canard” - the assertion that the deposed menteri besar was during his brief tenure a patsy in the hands of the DAP - in the course of a post in his blog, Chedet, on the late Lee Kuan Yew’s achievement in transforming Singapore from Third World backwater to global cynosure.

“Dr Mahathir says I was the Muslim conduit for Chinese designs for domination of the country,” said the Perak state assemblyperson and PAS central committee member.

“That’s rather rich coming from someone who during his premiership strutted his distaste of American hegemony but the record has shown that he allowed, when he was in charge of the country, the US Pacific fleet refuelling and other facilities here,” claimed Nizar.

“That’s not all, Mahathir ( left ) paraded his anti-Zionist credentials by constantly warning about the secret workings of Jewish lobbies, but the record shows he paid convicted Jewish lobbyist Jack Abramoff a few million US dollars to pave the way for his visit to then-president George Bush in 2002,” said Nizar, in elaboration of his refutation of Mahathir’s criticisms.

He continued: “One may reasonably ask who the real dupe is - someone who has found three deputy prime ministers to be defective and has had to eject them before going on to pick two prime ministers, one of whom he hounded from office and the other he now is busily showing the door.”

Nizar observed that Mahathir had recently admitted he left medical practice for the more lucrative field of politics but, he said, the “Malaysian people are rapidly awakening to the reality that medicine’s loss has not been politics’ gain, and it is becoming evident that one man’s enrichment has been at the expense of the country.”

“In fact, the people are beginning to calculate the extent of the damage done to the country during Mahathir’s tenure as PM,” he asserted.

An engineer by training, Nizar said that medical doctors don’t usually prescribe for themselves but Mahathir’s ailment, he suspects, is only susceptible to self-remedy.

“So I say, Physician heal thyself.”