Mahathir: I failed to groom successors at all levels

He was commenting on his "very good friend, colleague, former Deputy President of Umno and Deputy Prime Minister Musa Hitam" blaming him for the failure to achieve Vision 2020.

KUALA LUMPUR: Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad conceded in his latest blog posting that he did not train anyone so that they can make a success of Vision 2020 because he believes in leadership by example. “I must have set a bad example because those who succeeded me all failed to make a success of Vision 2020.”

“I am to blame of course.”

In a Dear Musa note, thanking him very much for pin-pointing the cause of the failure of Vision 2020, Mahathir went on to say: “You must have known this in 1986, long before the Vision. It must have been your foresight which caused you to resign from the government I headed. So, no one can blame you. Your service to me and the nation will go down in history.”

Mahathir was commenting on his “very good friend, colleague, former Deputy President of Umno and Deputy Prime Minister Musa Hitam” blaming him for the failure to achieve Vision 2020. “It’s all because I failed to groom successors at all levels.”

The former Prime Minister thinks his first failure was Musa Hitam himself. “He could not wait for me to retire. So, he resigned after five years being with me as my deputy, in a government his boys called the MM Government.”

Musa, charged Mahathir, believed the Umno Supreme Council would throw him out and appoint him as President. “The Council decided to persuade him to return as Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy President. He came back as Deputy President.”

At the next Umno Election, recalled Mahathir, Musa persuaded his erstwhile rival and enemy, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, to contest for President. “He was prepared to be Deputy President and Deputy Prime Minister under Razaleigh but not under me.”

The former Prime Minister said “Musa did all these”. However, he overlooked his former deputy’s bad faith and later appointed him as Special Envoy to the UN with ministerial rank.

In the contest for presidency, said Mahathir in revisiting the issue, Syed Hamid Albar, Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Rais Yatim sided with Razaleigh. “Ghafar Baba and I won.”

Nevertheless, said Mahathir, he appointed all those who were not loyal to him as Ministers in his Cabinet. “One of them, Abdullah, eventually was named my successor as Prime Minister.”

Far from choosing only loyalists, reminded the former Prime Minister, he chose those disloyal to him.