22 reasons why Mahathir must not be the next PM
You cannot go to war with an ally who has betrayed you numerous times. You must cut out the gangrene to save the limb before it is too late.
P Gunasegaram, Focus Malaysia
WHY this article? Because there has been a raucous cry for Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to be installed as the prime minister yet again – the only one the Malays respect, the only one who can keep everyone together, we need him, he is competent etc.
But these are lies as we shall show shortly, shouted and screamed by his supporters and troopers and those way too desperate to get back into power after tasting it for some time. For others, especially those whose tongues are rather restrained right now, it may be a matter of whether they are prosecuted or not, they remain silent, letting others speak for them.
And why 22 reasons? Because by some quirk of fate he was PM the second time around for some 22 months, after his 22-year reign ending in 2003 in his earlier stint. After 17 years, at the ripe old age of 93, he was back in the saddle, riding again.
In June 2006, I wrote an article about what I thought about his 22-year stint previously through 22 groups of questions making, as you might expect, unflattering conclusions about his leadership. The article was entitled “22 Questions for Mahathir” one, for each year he was in office. You can look at the questions and conclusions here if you have missed or forgotten them.
In this pivotal moment in the history of the country I thought it would be good, that in the same vein 14 years ago, I offer 22 reasons, one for each month he was in office, why he should NOT be PM yet again. Believe me, there are more reasons than that – I had to edit them down.
Without further ado, let’s get into the reasons. In the interest of brevity and readability I am not going to say too much but state one or two of the most important supports for my assertions. Here goes:
- He cannot be trusted as he breaks promises and lies. He promised over and over again that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim would succeed him when he had no intention to let him do so. He said much earlier that his only aim was to remove Datuk Seri Najib Razak as PM but changed his tune later.
- He broke manifesto promises. He excused that by saying he did not expect PH to win. The truth was he did not want to because many of the promises could be quite easily met. He even pulled out of a commitment to sign ICERD, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
- He did not reform and he had no plan. He did not make any of the reforms promised, especially with regard to balancing powers within the administration and reducing the power of the PM. Instead he became dictatorial despite having only 13 MPs out of 222 under his wing, including himself, in the 2018 elections. He offered no plan for the nation going forward.
