Mahathir using Wan Azizah as a “human shield” won’t fly

If I did what Mahathir did to Anwar, I will accept that I have it coming when they come after me to avenge themselves. If I use their wife or children as a human shield to protect myself from them, after all that I had done to them, then shame on me.  

Nehru Sathiamoorthy

Mahathir, predictably, is playing word games in regards to his trouble with the findings of the Batu Puteh RCI.

In response to the allegation by the Batu Puteh RCI that elements of treachery might be involved in Mahathir’s decision to not proceed with the applications to review and interpret the 2008 decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Batu Puteh, Mahathir is claiming that if his decision was wrong, then his entire cabinet – including Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah, who was Mahathir’s deputy PM at the time, must be guilty of treachery too, because the decision was made as a collective.

“If I was treacherous, then my deputy prime minister, Wan Azizah, was also treacherous,” he said in a press conference.

“If they were against the idea (not to proceed), they could have spoken up, but no one said anything, so we have to assume they accepted it.

“Some of them should be called as witnesses,” he also remarked, to indicate that if he has to go down in lieu of the Batu Puteh issue, he intends to drag as many people down with him as possible.

Well, regardless of what Mahathir does, I think at the end of the day it won’t matter, because those in power want him to be humiliated, and thus, like it or not, he will have to suffer humiliation.

When he was in power and he wanted Anwar humiliated, it happened, regardless of what Anwar said in his defense and how many people, both international and domestic, spoke out against it.

Even if the traitor label that is plastered on him is a case of Anwar wanting to exact vengeance upon him – as many people, including me, believe in this case – so what?

It is not like Anwar does not have a reason to desire vengeance against Mahathir. Mahathir after all, was the one who crossed the line first in his feud with Anwar back in the 90s. What Mahathir did to Anwar back in 1998 was too much – everybody, even Mahathir’s fans and Anwar’s detractors, will unequivocally say that.

In politics, if you want to take down your competitor by saying they are corrupt or incompetent or weak or stupid, that is all fair and commensurate. Politics is a competitive field after all – if you don’t have the mettle to go on the offensive, then you should not step into the political arena.

But to humiliate your challenger in the way that Mahathir had humiliated Anwar, in front of the whole country, even before his wife and children, family and friends, when all that Anwar did was challenge Mahathir’s position and power, which as a ruler and politician, is not something that Mahathir should be surprised or be outraged about, was too much.

The worst part was that Mahathir had zero proof before he went ahead and humiliated Anwar. At best, Mahathir only believed that Anwar did what he alleged Anwar to have done. Regardless of whether there is any merit to Mahathir’s allegation, his decision to accuse Anwar with such a humiliating accusation, just based on his conviction that his opinion was correct, and that too in a court of law, to give what is merely his opinion an aura of officiality and authority, was too much.

Mahathir should have just stopped at the corruption allegation that he threw at Anwar. Just the corruption allegation that he threw against Anwar would have been enough to stop Anwar from challenging him and it would have been enough to put Anwar behind bars for a few years too. The other allegation, the humiliating one, was not at all necessary.

That Mahathir chose to go ahead with the humiliating accusation was a decision. It indicated that his issue with Anwar was personal, not just business. When you make business personal, it stops being business, and starts getting personal.

In the way things stand in the court of public opinion today, nobody thinks that Mahathir is a traitor, but everybody thinks that Anwar has a right to avenge himself against Mahathir after what Mahathir had done to him.

If Mahathir gets hit with the traitor allegation, he can’t weasel himself out of it by saying that if he is a traitor, then everybody in his cabinet – including Wan Azizah, is a traitor too, because nobody is looking at this entire affair from an objective and logical point of view.

We are all just looking at this from a personal and subjective point of view, and from a personal and subjective point of view, it doesn’t look good for Mahathir to use Anwar’s wife as a “human shield”, after all that he has already done to Anwar.

If I did what Mahathir did to Anwar, I will accept that I have it coming when they come after me to avenge themselves. If I use their wife or children as a human shield to protect myself from them, after all that I had done to them, then shame on me.

At this stage, Mahathir just has two options.

His first option is to admit that he went overboard and ask for Anwar’s forgiveness but personally, I doubt that this will happen.

His second option is to read about Leonidas at Thermopylae or the Kidung Sunda or watch the leaked video of Saddam Hussein before he was executed, to learn about how you can salvage your legacy and reputation, even if you face defeat in your last battle.

In history, not all great rulers die in victory. Many in fact, die in defeat.

It won’t matter how many victories you had in your life, history won’t remember you well,  if you behave like a coward when you face your final defeat.

Rather than use Wan Azizah as a human shield, it will be better if Mahathir owns up to all that he did, face what is coming with courage and not flinch when the axe falls down on him.

If he takes his final defeat like a man, history will still likely remember him as a great man, even if his story ends in defeat.