– Former prime minister (twice) Dr Mahathir Mohamad

COMMENT | Whenever I read anything that the old maverick says, I always wonder who former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad disdain more, the Chinese or the Malays? And do not for one moment think that only gullible Malays would fall for his twisted logic. 

Mahathir had Pakatan Harapan and its supporters eating out of his cold hands before and after the election that swept them into power and even when he was scheming and destroying Harapan from within, pusillanimous Harapan operatives were seeing and hearing no evil.

As someone who endorsed the old maverick and had to make my public mea culpa soon after he took power, his recent tirades against the royal institution, the Chinese, and hooking up with PAS is just further evidence of the downward spiral of this country.

The deep Islamic state and their proxies are merely using him to further their theocratic agenda and so blinding is his hatred for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim that he is willing to derail this country out of spite. Mahathir has always demonstrated contempt for the Malays. What else would you call the emotions that fuel his polemics?

UB40 : Chinese and DAP = the fall guy, the bogeyman was the trick use to brainwash the melayu. Even Chinese newspapers to wrap Nasi lemak also make noise. The success of a country is dependent on the good leader couple with competent labor force. Racism and religious extremism has no room if you want the country to develop.

No two ways . You already know where we are heading. Tun M your 22 years did not equal the Singapore dollar with the MYR but 3 times lower. So don’t pull the melayu along that they are lazy since you can’t even beat a tiny country call Singapore. It looks that you don’t have the leadership qualities and merits to lead this country but blame others for what the country is facing now.

MS : What I wrote three years ago is as relevant now as it was then. When the final chapter on former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is written, it will be recorded that he was always a polarising figure who thrived on controversy and outrage - a man with a serious and deep chip on his shoulder who never had the self-confidence to openly celebrate his Indian antecedents.

He entered the political scene playing the angry young man and never even once got out of that character - even now in his 90s. In that, he cuts a figure as pathetic as Don Quixote, laughable, pitiable but also contemptible for his willingness to cut deals with the worst. He hated the late Lee Kuan Yew because the latter was his intellectual superior with the unique ability to make something out of nothing, like turning a swamp into a trillion-dollar success and everything Mahathir wanted but was incapable of achieving.

That was why he ignored the multiple warnings issued by Lee on the road being taken by the Malay- dominated administration which promoted divisive “ketuananism” (supremacy) as opposed to harnessing the diversity of the country for the greater good of all. He was hell-bent on doing it "his way" when all the indications since the 80s showed that "his way" was a road to economic and social disaster.

That was why he demonised the DAP and injected his venom into the Malay masses such that the very mention of that party causes uncontrollable spasms among Malays. Now it is all too late. The demons he nourished over at least 40 years or so have started to devour him - the schisms engineered by his National Civics Bureau (BTN) and Islamic Development Department (Jakim), the mediocrity he favored over meritocracy, dumbed-down public education in which critical thinking was banned, politicized Islam, grandiose projects to flatter himself, and at least two generations of compromised and incompetent politicians whose hands the country is now in.

So now in his final lap, he is back where he started - manipulative, angry, griping, still not knowing right from wrong, and still the recalcitrant watching from the sidelines as the politics he rigged with race goes into injury time.

Pinkrabbit : Another 'bullseye' of an article. Should translate it into other languages.