Is Petronas Dr M’s next target?

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad 'moves' from one extreme to another without any feeling of guilt.

COMMENT

The real Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is emerging. Former prime minister Mahathir looks out for the welfare of the corporate world – the big businesses, the crony capitalists.

He wants to ensure subsidies go to Independent Power Producers, juiciest of deals go to highway toll operators, big business continue to get bigger businesses.

He will support the Gamuda-isation of Malaysia. Yes sirree folks, Mahathir is the champion of corporate welfarism.

Under this version of welfare, the power of the state is used to protect the rich and powerful rather than the poor and the society in general.

Mahathir is now the spokesman of welfarism.

Contradictory Mahathir

Mahathir continues to be the embodiment of contradictions. He moves from one extreme to another without being burdened with the feelings of guilt.

He is generally seen as the man responsible for breeding the culture of corruption, yet he can also be the spokesman for a clean government.

Ex-ministers who listened to his solemn intonation that the government is corrupt from the top to bottom, could have puked all over the place in one of those gatherings of ex-ministers.

He quits Umno when he thinks Umno is rotten to the core. Each level of the Umno leadership is corrupt, he has said.

And this, he had told a social gathering of ex-minister, would include premier Najib Tun Razak. And when Umno was led by Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, he left Umno.

Next target Petronas

Mahathir wants to have his cake and eat it too all the time. Therefore the world is how he defines it.

So I was not surprised when Mahathir came out in support of Air Asia gobbling up MAS.

He detests MAS alluding to its stinking management. But there is an endgame to Mahathir’s shifting of the goal post.

Next month, he will say he’s fed-up of stodgy and limbering Petronas. So he will say he supports Kencana-Sapura as the new evil axis that will eat up Petronas.

How?

All new fields will be declared marginal fields and Mahathir will no doubt support a bill and law to give a monopoly over marginal fields to Sapura and Kencana.

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman and a FMT columnist.