SAD DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN FOR MALAYSIA: AT 93, MAHATHIR CHOOSES TO DESTROY HIS OWN LEGACY – INSTEAD OF LEVERAGING ON HIS HUGE POPULARITY TO LEAD MALAYS FORWARD WITH MERITOCRACY, HE OPTS AGAIN FOR CHEAP RACISM

Mahathir almost didn’t make it. The urbanites – regardless of ethnic-Chinese, ethnic-Malay or ethnic-Indian – understood ex-prime minister Najib Razak’s thievery in 1MDB scandal. There was little doubt that those educated urban people were anxious to vote Najib out. The rural people, especially the village Malay folks, however, didn’t understand one bit about 1MDB at all.

The Malay villagers were bombarded with RM2.6 billion, the amount of money found in Najib’s personal banking accounts. Still, to the gullible and ignorant Malay folks, they couldn’t differentiate between a hundred thousand and a million, let alone a billion. They thought it was just a couple of hundreds or at most thousands. Obviously 1MDB wasn’t a big deal to them.

Fortunately to Mahathir, his protégé-turned-enemy Najib Razak had also embarked on a grand project – GST (goods and services tax) – which was implemented on 1 April 2015. Because the GST hit the bread and butterdirectly, the same illiterate and gullible Malay villagers understood the issues better than Najib’s own economic advisers and analysts.

In fact, Mahathir was so frustrated with so many dumb people that he tweeted in March, 2017 – “Only idiots or corrupt people would still support Najib and ignore the condemnation of him for money laundering by the rest of the world.” That was why the 93-year-old man was reduced to campaigning at rural areas to explain in layman term how Najib stole the money.

Now that Mahathir had succeeded in his mission of overthrowing the Najib regime, he has become very popular. Not bad for a former dictator who emerges as a saviour. Had Najib not implemented GST, not that he can in the first place considering the cash handouts he had to dole out, Mahathir may not be able to oust the corrupted son of Razak.

Therefore, Mahathir should appreciate the fact that he is given the opportunity to correct his past mistakes – ranging from the practice of corruption, oppression, suppression, nepotism, cronyism, and of course racism. However, based on an exclusive interview with Channel NewsAsia, it appears the old man is still obsessed with his old favourite pastime – racism.

PM Mahathir Mohamad has said there will continue to be policies in place to help the country’s ethnic majority Malays, in part to avoid conflict between them and “richer” ethnic groups like the Chinese. He said – “We have reduced the disparity with the Malays and mainly the Chinese, but there are certain areas where we need to give Malays some kind of push.”

Giving an example, the world’s oldest prime minister said – “When I was in the United Kingdom, I met a number of Chinese students. They were there because their fathers, their parents were able to pay for their studies there. But I find that Malay parents, by and large, cannot afford to have university education for their children.”

Hence, the genius Mahathir argues that more scholarships need to be given to Malays because the Chinese are largely in business while the Malays are mostly civil servants. He said – “In business, you can make tons of money. Malays, by contrast, were largely civil servants and wage earners who cannot afford to send children to universities, because it’s now very costly.”

Perhaps Mahathir has forgotten his frustration last year at the incredible idiocy of the Malays who worshipped and supported Najib despite his corruption and money laundering. Mahathir had done a marvellous job keeping the Malays dumb during his 22-year-rule from 1981 to 2003. This is his last chance to promote meritocracy instead of racism when dishing out scholarships.

Yes, Mahathir should leverage on his current popularity to boldly promote meritocracy among the Malays. Just because he met a number of Chinese students whose parents were able to sponsor their studies does not mean 23.4% of 32-million populations of the country’s Chinese are rich enough to send their children to overseas for education without a sweat.

A large portion of 6.6-million ethnic-Chinese have no choice but to seek education locally. Amazingly, even without foreign education, the Chinese could do well in their career unlike the Malays. It’s a public knowledge that the cream of the Malay top students would be offered scholarships and sent overseas for “quality education”.

Whatever leftover of the Malay students would be given the privilege to access “Malays only” institutions such as UiTM and other universities. Yet, despite given “first class education” locally, amusingly, most UiTM Malay graduates are inferior to even TAR College Chinese graduates. There’s a reason why unemploymentamong Malay graduates is extraordinary high.

People will not appreciate something that they did not have to fight for. A classic example is Najib Razak who was born with a silver spoon and was given practically everything on a silver platter – including the premiership by none other than Mahathir himself. And look what Mahathir had done to the country by promoting Najib without considering meritocracy.

Chinese students, on the contrary, have to fight even among themselves to enter the already limited places at the local universities, again, thanks to Mahathir’s quota system as a result of racist-based education system. Even at the young age of primary schools, the Chinese students at vernacular school have to go out begging for donations from the public.

And Mahathir has the cheek to say Chinese students should not be given the equal treatment as Malay students because the former have rich parents. Hey, it’s not Chinese fault that majority of the Malays can only work for the government. It was Mahathir’s previous racist and discrimination policies that allow only Malays the easy path to civil service.

And it was Mahathir’s grand privatization that gave birth to the so-called GLCs (government-linked companies) and look at who is the top-15 Chief Executiveswho were supposed to run the companies they were entrusted with, but they made a “Hebat Negaraku” music video instead. Racism breeds complacency, which in turn breeds incompetency and corruption and money laundering.

After 3-million UMNO members were given the privilege to hijack scholarships, now Mahathir wants to do the same thing again in the hope of distributing the goodies more fairly but in the process the Chinese will be discriminated (again). It surely doesn’t sound like a fair new government, does it? Perhaps Mahathir should investigate why the Malays can’t afford to pay for their children education.

The answer may surprise you. While the Chinese are working their arse off to find and save money for their children education, the Malays actually have low priority on the same subject. When asked why they don’t do so, they would simply answer that the government will “take care of it (education)”. So, they just have to worry about putting food on the table and shopping at Sogo.

At the end of the day, Mahathir has to ask how long he plans to spoon-feed the Malays. How many more generations of Malays does the new government need to help while leaving the Chinese to fend for themselves. After 61 years, have Mahathir and the ethnic-Malay give it a thought that such privilege is doing more harm than good? Will Mahathir be still around when Najib 2.0 emerges?

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