Recent articles by Dr Farish A Noor and Prof Ramasamy on Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Mahathirism to me is a boring discourse. What I am interested in is not how he got to be the way he is, but what he has done to our country - the bottom line. What has he done for the farmers, fishermen, teachers, policemen, students, taxpayers, indigenous people, Indian Malaysians, car owners, labourers, etc.?

Mahathir's apologists are always quick to attribute the various high profile mega projects to his name.

He may have been a stern critic of the West, but often he does an about-face turn and court the very elements he scorns so. He often accuses others of 'crimes' he himself commits (like inciting hatred, likening Suqiu to communists, then one year later hugs Fidel Castro). All the rules and laws only seem to apply to others except for him and his cronies. In short, he is a hypocrite.

Many of his long-time supporters who may not be very sanguine about his governance in the past four years still hold out hope that he may turn over a new leaf and steer the country back to the right path. They still think he is the best person to lead our country. Any shortcoming is explained away with the appeal that he is only human. This is pathetic. When his actions become more and more indefensible and difficult to justify, they fall back on "to err is human".

Did he even attempt to solve our annual flood problem? Is handing the nation's resources to a handful of cronies his idea of creating a more self-reliant and confident Malay capitalist class? He is the PM - when he errs, we pay the price.

If he is the best we have, I shudder to ask what more is installed for us. More white elephants? More Bakun dams? More crony bailouts? More toll rises? More underqualified students? More ISA arrests? More uncompetitive national cars? More Petaling Jaya Selatan incidents? More annual floods? More reneging on oil royalties? More Nanyang takeovers? More castigating the Malays as ingrates and haprak? God help us.

The only true contribution I see from his administration is opening our doors to foreign investments to set up manufacturing facilities. But the lead we have over other developing countries is eroding fast as China opens up her vast market and cheap labour and India with her largest pool of software engineers in the world while we continue to rely on second-hand technologies discarded by developed countries.

Having weathered political turmoil for 20 years and still going strong despite the litter of problems prove that he is an astute politician, but a leader? That requires another set of criteria. Gandhi wasn't the PM of India even for a single day, but he was a true leader. Gandhi is immortalised because he put India before his personal gains or fame.

If Dr Mahathir wants to be remembered, the only thing he needs to do is to put the laws back into the hands of judiciary. Put the Constitution back on the pedestal. Lead by example, not by decree or mandate. If that means he is subjected to the same laws, then so be it. At present, he is accountable to no one but himself.

We don't need the Petronas Twin Towers to remember him by. We have the ISA, Universities and Colleges University Act, Anwar Ibrahim's incarceration and Printing Presses and Publications Act, among others.

Alas, he is already 76. Perhaps he thinks it doesn't stand much chance for him to go down in history as the most enlightened leader, at least he will be remembered as the one who has built most stuff.

The greatest monuments are those that the people build for their leaders, not those that the leaders build for themselves.