Mahathir's 3 greatest mistakes

You know, I have a fascination with the Latin saying 'Omne trium perfectum' which means 'everything that comes in threes is perfect' or 'good things come in threes'.

Maybe it sets me thinking about my erstwhile sweetie, wakakaka, who I had once adored so much, especially when she argued with me so sweetly that the saying was not about 'threes' but 'trees', to wit, 'good things come in trees' like, she painstakingly explained, mangoes, durians, rambutans, etc.

Yesterday I posted The power of 3, about 3 things or happenings that will make Mahathir so mad (not as in gila but as in marah) he may possibly suffer from a massive cardiac arrest.

Of course we don't wish for that but he too must play his part in looking after his health by, say, cutting back on his favourite roti puff kelapa (coconut-stuffed bread roll), wakakaka.

So today I'm posting another 3 thingies, this time about Mahathir's 3 greatest mistakes, but then how would these three qualify under 'Omne trium perfectum' if I'm talking about his mistakes?

Well the Chinese in me tells moi that good things come with the bad a la Yang being usually and naturally accompanied by Yin, thus his mistakes would easily fall (and conveniently for blogger me, wakakaka) under the Yin category, wakakaka again.

Yang & Yin, wakakaka 

I would say his 3 biggest worst - wait wait nay, 'worst' sounds pretty sissy and won't give the impact I'm attempting to convey - so let's call it instead his 3 'baddest' (wakakaka and f**k good English) blunders would be:

(1) He brought his sonny boy, dear Mukhriz, into politics way way too late, and that's why he is so worried sick right now because right at the upper echelon of the UMNO leadership pyramidical structure, there is less and less space to accommodate Johnny-come-lately's like Mukhriz - and all due to his own fault, piss-poor planning and an overly pompous presumptuous about his power to continue being the dalang (master puppeteer) of the UMNO leadership wayang gedog.

dei, Sangrama Badawijaya, I want you to make way for my new successor, Kertarajasa Jayajibdhana

3 protagonists, wakakaka

It also hurts when KJ and Shahrizat ganged up to marshal the UMNO Youth and UMNO Women's votes for Hisham during the party VP elections to enable Hisham to scrap past Mukhriz into the last of the 3 VP positions.

Yes, he should blame himself for the current predicament re his son's political legacy, that is, assuming he can ever bring himself to be honest and self-critical.

Of course he might have (incorrectly) thought he would have plenty of time to groom sonny and to also kowtim-rize the leadership ladder in UMNO for Junior by the time he resigned in, say, 2004. But alas, his quarrel with Anwar, wakakaka, caused a major setback to his plans (for grooming Mukhriz) when he kuai kuai resigned far earlier than he had planned.

Handing over the reins to AAB he thought he could still play the eternal imperial dalang, but while he was successful with AAB, he had in that selfish process (and to the absolute delight of Pakatan Rakyat people) wrought untold havoc on his own party, causing UMNO to lose its once-invincible 2/3 majority with a humongous loss in seats and percentage votes.

how dare you allow your raKeyan Jayadarma to bully my poor boy 

3 protagonists again, wakakaka

In 2004 AAB as BN leader led his coalition to an impressive win of 198 federal seats (out of a total of 219) and 63.9% of the votes to the opposition's total of 20 seats (not including 1 Independent).

But in 2008, after Mahathir's campaign against AAB, BN secured only 140 seats (out of 222 total) and only 51.39%of the votes to Pakatan's 82 seats and 47.79% off the votes.

This effectively meant BN lost a humongous near-60 seats and a considerable chunk of the overall votes.

That Mahathir-ized anti-BN momentum in 2008 (which brought along voters awakening) continued and saw BN losing a further 7 federal seats in 2013.

Now he is at it again, attacking UMNO even more ruthlessly and ferociously this time, to the smiles of Pakatan again, and we await eagerly breathlessly to see what will be the outcome in GE-14 (expected in 2018), but Pakatan must play its own part which alas with PAS going on its hudud-galvanized way may possibly dilute or even negate Pakatan achievements in 2018.

What a wonderful man, for Pakatan that is, wakakaka.

(2) He failed to groom, guide and galvanize/goad his daughter Marina Mahathir into politics. I reckon Marina would have been a far stronger, competent and more determined take-no-shit politician than Mukhriz, who is more of a mummy's boy. And she has character charm and credibility.

This has been one of the mysteries of Mahathir's political dynastic ambitions when we consider that Malay women in Malaysia, unlike those in other Islamic countries or even Western ones, have played a very strong role in politics, public services, top professions and business enterprise.

It has been to the credit of our Malay community that Malay women have been performing so well, way beyond than what the women of other Islamic countries are, merely the chattels of men.

If Mahathir had encouraged his daughter to participate in politics, I wonder whether Marina could have become Malaysia's 1st female PM?

I believe of his 3 'mistakes' the failure to push Marina into top politics would be his worst, nay, let's use 'baddest' for emphasis and impact.

(3) I leave this one for you to assess, where it could well be one of the following, or perhaps even something I haven't written down as follows:

• quarrel with Anwar
• quarrel with the Chinese
• panicked and miscalculated his own political prospects as PM post-1998 and pre-2014
• surrounding himself with, as Anwar said (and who himself was one too), tok ampu
• etc etc etc

Wakakaka.