Mahathir haunted by own doings
Quintin Rozario, Malaysia Outlook
Everyone of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s comments these days is nuanced, loaded as a multidimensional message.
In the one dimension he conveys his actual message.
Hidden in another dimension is often a barrow in which he advances his dynastic ambitions.
Dr. Mahathir’s recent “apology” is anything but an apology.
His mea culpa is a convenient late admission of self realisation that his deeds live after him but not necessarily for him as he desires.
His delusions of grandeur and his failure at succession planning is evident in his “apology”.
Dr. Mahathir believed he had set the stage for dynastic rule whilst in office.
He believed that it would bind his successors in office.
Dr. Mahathir’s curtailing of the Agong’s powers in his time was a device he constructed in order to enjoy unfettered powers in running the country without interference from the Agong.
He is now attempting to deny Prime Minister Najib Razak the benefit of the same powers that enabled him to deal with the nation’s challenges.
Now to examine the ‘invisible ‘dimension of Dr. Mahathir’s “apology”.
Although a silent admirer of the man who made him bristle more often than any other leader, the late Lee Kuan Yew, the Mahathir is no Lee Kuan Yew in politics.
Perhaps that’s because the respective destinies of the two men were cut along parallel paths towards identical goals intersecting only occasionally on common regional issues.
Dr. Mahathir lacked the depth, breadth, vision and intellect Lee demonstrated in his lifetime as leader of Singapore.
The Mahathir lacked the foresight, creativity and long term defensive planning strategies that came naturally and instinctively to the late Lee.
Again perhaps this is because of circumstances.
That the two were authoritarian, long serving leaders of their respective countries is where the similarities begin and end.
