Dr M, who started the vilification of the DAP?

"Princes in this case,

Do hate the traitor, though they love the treason."

- Samuel Daniel

If anything, former prime minister’s Dr Mahathir Mohamad's hissy fit about being ashamed - or is that embarrassed - of “Malays” merely reinforces racial narratives (perfected by successive Umno regimes) that Malay political leadership aligned with the DAP are selling out on bangsa and agama.

Obviously, “the buck stops here” is a maxim which is alien to strongman types that Mahathir and those who support him like to think of him as. Mahathir has the audacity to wonder when the Malays become afraid of the DAP, when they fought the British, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and whichever stand-ins demagogues need to gin up the base.

His race-baiting comments on foreigners is the flip side of the coin. By always setting up the non-Malay communities as economic foils to the Malay community, he continues narratives that the Malay community is under siege and that while the community is “lazy” and unwilling to work, the state is needed to protect them from the encroachment of non-Malays.

Take something as poisonous to the race relations as the Biro Tatanegara (BTN) courses. When the state of Selangor was busy attempting to dismantle this obscene programme, Mahathir was all for it. When it came to Anwar Ibrahim wanting independent Australian observers when it came to the election, Mahathir said this: "If it is the white man, he will trust. If it's Malays, it is otherwise."

Again, the only person who does not seem to trust the “Malays” is the former prime minister. After all, he has accused them of not wanting to work, of selling off their lands, of being subservient to "liberal" Malays like Anwar and, of course, warning them of how the DAP would supplant their positions as "masters of this land".

Indeed Bersatu’s post-election moves are what made Bersatu the toxic little party that could, while Harapan was bending over backwards believing that appeasing the Malay political establishment guaranteed them federal power.

Mahathir and his acolytes propagate this narrative that he attempted to change the Malays. Imbue them with characteristics and traits that are defined and sustain a capitalistic form of governance. This, of course, is complete hogwash. The functionality of government - however tenuous that may be - has always been hampered by the political aims and hegemonic agendas of the Malay political establishment.

Remember when Mukhriz Mahathir admitted feeling guilty when in Umno he used the tactics that the old maverick wonders now how the Malays become so afraid of the DAP - "Looking at Umno, when there were big issues which we could not address, we would talk about DAP, Chinese chauvinism and how Lim Kit Siang becoming prime minister would destroy Malaysia, that the Malays would disappear, and the mosques can no longer air the azan. I admit that I too have said such things, in front of a 100 percent Malay audience. Thinking back, I feel guilty and a sense of regret."

Does anyone really think that Bersatu was any different from Umno? Remember DAP leader Ronnie Liu and his paper tiger attacks against Mahathir? This was the response of a Bersatu political operative, Mohd Rafiq Naizamohideen: “Liu bukan satu-satunya pemimpin penting DAP yang menyerang Bersatu dan kepemimpinan Dr Mahathir, malah ramai lagi pemimpin utama DAP membuat serangan terbuka terhadap Bersatu dengan mengeluarkan kenyataan mengguris perasaan orang Melayu dan umat Islam.”

While Liu’s critique was flawed, what was his “crime” that Bersatu Youth and the rest of the bangsa and agama crowd of Bersatu deemed heinous enough to declare open season on the DAP? Well, Liu was sounding the alarm bells of the fact that the prime minister was reneging on the manifesto and on secular and egalitarian policies, something that Harapan was supposedly based on.

And Mahathir now has the gall to wonder why the Malays are scared of the DAP? I mean, look at Mahathir's comments about how the poor should not be envious of the wealthy. "Why are they poor? Because they are unproductive and do not contribute to society in a way where society would repay them."

Does anyone really believe that the plutocrat class who are the cronies of the government – any government – are paying their “fair share”? A plutocrat class created by a system of patronage and post-May 13, a class engineered by a coterie, which includes the old maverick, that indulges in this sort of contempt for the "poor" especially during times of trouble?

The excesses of this class are public knowledge but what creates a sense of “envy” is not their money but the fact that they seem to be immune from sanctions of the state when it comes to their lifestyles.

If you read far-right blogs steeped in “ketuanism”, Chinese plutocrats whose wealth are a matter of public record – if not their political connections – are the targets of class and race-based attacks. Nobody acknowledges the fact that we have political operatives and their attendant cronies who think that two million ringgit is pocket change.

Ask Ku Nan (former minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, centre in photo) - “And Yang Arif, there’s a lot of things which I cannot disclose because certain amount we collect, we don’t book in because of political funds. There are things which we can say, and things which we cannot say, because of politics, Yang Arif."

And, of course, when it comes to governmental thievery, the old maverick is loathe to give credence to “rumours” like he said when it came to Najib Abdul Razak before the old maverick had his 'road to Damascus' moment – “I get reports about corruption all the time. When I ask them, please give me some evidence, nobody can give me any evidence. All they can say is well 'we heard', 'these are rumours' and all that.”

While I am extremely critical of Anwar, at least he had the cajones to form a multiracial party to take on Umno. "Mahathrists" like to claim that Mahathir was needed to dislodge Najib, this is very much in doubt. Umno and PAS have detoxed themselves of this idea with the only people left being supporters of Mahathir and, of course, the mandarins of Harapan.

Ultimately what will destroy Bersatu is not the unholy alliances they make but rather the Umno/PAS voting base who have already demonstrated in the last election that they have no time for Mahathir's contempt.

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. A retired barrister-at-law, he is one of the founding members of Persatuan Patriot Kebangsaan. - Mkini