YOUR LAST CHANCE DR M: IF AT 91, YOU BETRAY MALAYSIANS - ALL HELL WILL BREAK LOOSE

Zaid Ibrahim's determination and candour are helping his efforts to reject Najib Razak's leadership, and urge future administrations to reform Malaysian politics. He wants us to set aside our differences and unite.

Aware that former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad is a crucial part of the reform movement and equally aware that Mahathir is a divisive character, the former law minister has urged us to refrain from being too critical of Mahathir.

Zaid is right to suggest that we trust one another.

He explained that Mahathir had lived in a different era and like his Singaporean counterpart, Lee Kuan Yew, chose to prioritise "issues of economic survival and racial unity over democracy".

He said, "They had to deal with abject poverty, foreign occupation, war, communist insurgency and the dark days of colonial rule. They had to deal with issues of life and death."

We realise that Zaid's intentions are sincere but Malaysians, comprising Malays, non-Malays, East and West Malaysians, have been betrayed by Umno Baru and Malaysia's longest serving premier. Today, they are psychologically scarred.

The Kadazan-Dusuns and Muruts were not betrayed by communists or colonialists. They were betrayed by the implementation of Project IC (or Project M - where M stands for Mahathir), and turned into a minority in their own land. In Project IC, illegal immigrants were allowed into Sabah, for a political reason, to bump up numbers, and voters, for the ruling government.

Ask the residents of Ipoh, once dubbed the City of Millionaires, where tycoons made their money from tin, what happened after Maminco, the company with a paid-up capital of RM2, tried to corner the tin market, on the London metal exchange.

The Americans released their stockpile of tin and the price of tin halved in 1985. An industry which employed 40,000 people was doomed. Ipoh became a ghost city, with people migrating overseas to earn a living. Many worked in England and Ireland's Chinese restaurants, washing dishes. Others retrained and never returned, to Malaysia.

Despite being called a party which protects the interests of the Malays, one dark incident in Malaysian history occurred in Memali, a village in Kedah, when Malays attacked another group of Malays. They were on different sides of the political divide. Eighteen people died at the hands of Malaysian police field force troops. Umno division leaders were afraid of the charismatic ustaz, Ibrahim 'Libya', of PAS and of defeat in the looming general election.

At a Gerakan Party Conference, on 29 September 2001, Mahathir declared Malaysia an Islamic State, thus starting a chain of events, which have cursed multi-cultural, multi-faith Malaysia.

Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamad

Where religion was once a private preserve, nowadays Muslims find that their private lives, even in the privacy of their own homes, is a matter for the state. The moral police roam wild and the Malay women are even more downtrodden than the men. Their lives are subject to the scrutiny of the men in robes. Non-Malays are not spared.

There are other scandals, like the Asian Rare Earth, Mitsubishi chemicals plant outside Ipoh. The Suqui memorandum. Proton. MAS. BMF. Crony capitalism flourished.  Many scandals, were swept under the carpet, once a problem emerged, just as our leaders do today.

The common factor in the above incidents is one man - Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

If Malaysians are wary of Mahathir, it is not without reason. Those with a bright future were denied scholarships or jobs, because they were not Bumiputra. Malays who were outspoken were punished. We have lost many citizens to Singapore, and elsewhere, because they were the wrong colour or creed, and did not toe the government line.

During the past four decades, we lost our democracy and the many checks and balances needed for a stable government.

We are eager for reform and will unite to regain our lost freedoms, but we will not be betrayed, again. - http://theantdaily.com/