Malaysiakini's interview with Dr Mahathir Mohamad continues to draw a panoply of reactions from readers. Here's a selection.

Shufiyan Shukur: Many people have knocked Tun Dr Mahathir (TDM), me included. But not many can deny that despite all the negatives of his premiership, he has been a visionary, dragging a laggard country by the scruff of its neck towards development.

No doubt he has also created robber barons - intentionally or unintentionally only God and he knows - and these economic brigands have caused 'leakages' in the country's coffers and enriched themselves beyond the imagination of the rest of us.

But through him, we have the North-South Highway, Penang bridge, KLCC, and the country transformed from an agriculture to a manufacturing-based economy, and the Internet. Now where would we be without the Internet? We certainly would be without Malaysiakini.com which has become the standard bearer of the country's Internet usage and the epitome of item 7 of the MSC Bill of Guarantees ensure no censorship of Internet.

And he has put us on the world map, and made quite plain that he and Malaysia will not kowtow to the white man. And can we not forget the currency peg, implemented to thwart servitude to the IMF - a strategy once condemned, but now acknowledged to be quite brilliant?

Not more than three months ago, I was at one of those direct marketing presentations (I'm always suckered into these things). The speaker, a self-made Malaysian in his early 50s who was proud that he had failed even his Form 3 exams told what seemed to be a joke: "Last time, ah, the Mercedes Benz the white man built it, the Chinese owned it, the Malay drove it and the Indian washed it. But now, all can own it."

This seems to have summarised the state of the economy pre- and post-Mahathir.


KC: We should thank him for all the good that he has done for the country. Of course, he has made mistakes. Mistakes made while trying to do his utmost best to progress the country. Maybe we should count the good things he implemented and not the blemishes that we feel were the results of his decisions. There is no gain without the pain.

It takes a great man to run a country with a diverse multi-cultural society such as Malaysia within our multi-religious framework. History will surely judge him favourably. As such, we should not hound one of our great sons of the land in his retirement years. I believe he has earned the due respect that we must accord to him for his services to the country. Forgive Dr Mahathir for any mistakes he made all those 22 years. Forget the bad instances and count our blessings that he charted us the path he plodded on with the rest of us. I am sure it was not a picnic! Now let others after him struggle with the responsibility to bring us onto higher ground.

God bless our country, our people and all the leaders that strived to help build up this nation . God bless Dr Mahathir and his family.


Simon: I respect your (Mahathir) guts in doing things, but you have no guts in putting the Malays to the test of true meritocracy. Remember a sheltered plant is always weaker than the trees exposed to the full brunt of the sun. In my view, there is yet to be a true Malay visionary to lead the Malays. So your disappointment of the Malays is the doing of Umno and its leaders.


Janey: So it's okay for Mirzan (Mahathir) to be bailed out by the government? That is Petronas? I don't get it. And Formula 1 is not really government project? I guess when Marina got her company to supply water...


Big Joke: Our ex-PM says children of PM should not do business with the government. What a joke. Ask any businessman worth his salt about what other businesses Mahathir's sons had with the government. Okay, who were the parties who got the privatisation of the government hospital support services worth at least RM500 million a year. There's a lot more


Vijay: Perhaps it was just as well that in the past, malaysiakini was not given the chance to interview Mahathir. Going by the quality of the questions you posed and worse, your follow-up to his replies, you may as well have asked Bernama, or Matthias Chang, to have conducted the interview.

It appears that you did not at all prepare for the occasion. Here, we have a vicious cunning man who for 22 years misused and abused almost all the public facilities and institutions at his disposal and now plays the role of the pitiful misunderstood old man. And what did you do? You conveniently asked the right questions and he grabbed the opportunity to come across as Mr Nice Guy, the paragon of decency and fairness. Did you never anticipate the replies he would give and the hundreds of factual challenges available to show up his hypocrisy? Did it never occur to you to ask him, among other things, why he harbours such venom towards Singapore, Australia and the United States and yet is a mouse before Indonesia?

I am sorry, malaysiakini. You screwed up a great opportunity, and in the process demonstrated the same depth and probing mind which The Star or the New Straits Times display. Within the expectations of journalism, you cannot get lower than that.

Please do no use my real name. I am a chicken!