Open letter to Dr Mahathir Mohamad

Dear Tun,

The Parliament sitting which is scheduled for July will mark your 95th birthday. In your time, you have experienced colonial rule, Japanese occupation, the period of Independence, the formation of Malaysia and the May 13 riots among others.

As the country entered its industrial phase in the 80s, you spearheaded the country over the span of two decades and built the nation into a progressive state. You empowered the Malay community and necessitated the birth of Malay technocrats as it was needed to balance the socio-economic growth of Malaysia.

You did the right thing.

Today, various landmarks in the capital city and bustling traffic comprising of national vehicles are indisputable proof of your achievements. Thanks to you, Malaysia soared high among Asean countries and globally as well.

Malaysians are a thankful bunch and despite certain shortcomings and criticisms, we sincerely thank you for doing your job then. When the time came, you picked your successor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi who failed comfortably.

He was then made to hand over the premiership to Najib Abdul Razak who also happened to be your choice. However, he successfully turned the ruling government then into a full-blown kleptocracy.

Realising your mistake, you decided to correct the situation as you saw fit with the then opposition’s help. Despite fighting you for over 20 years, we accepted you and the proposed changes, realigned ourselves, swallowing our pride in the process.

PKR moved ahead with the Pakatan Harapan alliance following instructions from Anwar Ibrahim while he was still in prison. So did DAP and Amanah at a cost only their respective members truly know.

Eventually you formed a new Malay party called Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) and was given the chairpersonship of both the party and Pakatan Harapan. As part of the deal, Harapan mutually agreed to allot Bersatu over 50 plus seats for the 14th general election.

However, your party whom you boasted as a better alternative to Umno only managed to win 13 seats. The reality was that Malay support towards your party was not really forthcoming. Your party grassroots were merely seeds that had yet or were unable to bloom in time. It was only due to the work of the other component parties such as PKR and DAP that had built grassroots for over 20 years that the required Malay support was achieved.

In an unprecedented move and under special circumstances, your party and other parties won the general election under PKR’s banner. You became the nation’s seventh prime minister amidst pomp and joy from the people, many of whom made the tremendous effort and pulled all stops to vote us into the government.

Yet, despite all of that and with an agreement in place to allow Anwar to succeed as the next prime minister, you were not forthcoming with it. Various media that interviewed you recorded your acknowledgement to the deal as well as your apprehension.

The issue continued to be a sore point in the 22 months that you had administered the country and it was brought up again during the supreme council meeting of Harapan with yourself as chairperson on Feb 21.

Clearly in the audio recording of the meeting which has since gone public, a faction led by Azmin Ali and Zuraida Kamaruddin along with several other members of your party threatened to walk out over the transition issue.

Who then called for calm and allowed you to serve as premier until you saw fit then? It was none other than Anwar Ibrahim. You along with all others at the meeting then told the media that the government remained intact and that you had a free hand to reign for as long as you intended to.

All thanks to Anwar’s compromise. Who were missing at that press conference then? None other than Azmin and Zuraida as they were already set to oust the very government led by you.

During your reign, one thing remains very clear. The promise to go through with the transition was left in an ambiguous and debatable state which led to a trust deficit. The trust deficit that you created inexplicably or otherwise snowballed with other issues.

The institutional reforms contained in the Harapan manifesto fell through because of your unwillingness to step up to them. More often than not many moves for institutional changes were indirectly blocked. The bucking of this trend did not happen at the Prime Minister’s Office.

The lack of drive led to us being now scrutinised by the very same laws that we were supposed to have been abolished. You were criticised by the people for not fulfilling your promises then.

Today, the Sedition Act, as well as the Communications and Multimedia Act, continues to be misused by the new government to suppress the opposition on its policies. We are back to the days when tweets and comments can be investigated at will.

Your decision to resign following the Sheraton Move without consulting your partners was the most disappointing, to say the least. It left those in Harapan in a lurch. Cabinet ministers who were eager to continue their work were stripped of their posts.

As the crisis escalated, we remained steadfast and continued to support you. Even when you took up the interim post, we continued to support you. Instead of solidifying that support, you chose to gauge your support elsewhere and came up with the rather absurd idea of a unity government comprising of so-called technocrats appointed by you.

You also placed conditions whereby component party leaders such as Lim Guan Eng or Anwar Ibrahim would not hold any posts under this “fantasy government".

As you were dictating your terms to us, Muhyiddin Yassin pounced upon the opportunity and garnered support via further defections and deals to become the next prime minister and form a loose coalition government. In short, your unity government fantasy failed miserably.

At present, you have returned to the Harapan table. As it stands, you are without a party pending legal hearing which could take years and you only have five MPs including yourself for support.

Despite that, you continue to demand for the prime minister’s post even for a short period of six months. Our questions are:

• What guarantee will be available that a handover of power will be made to Anwar after the said six months given your ambiguous nature over that issue in the recent past? Will it be at the cost of dissolving the government once again?
  
• Would you accord or even allow Anwar the prime minister’s position if he had only five MPs in support compared to being the second-largest block in Harapan?

Only in Malaysia, it seems, that the smallest block within the coalition is able to dictate to other parties the choice for prime minister. The truth is we have compromised beyond our means for your benefit towards realising a dream of a different and meaningful government.

To us, your approach and style seem to be stuck in the 70s and 80s. The world is changing, we need a leader who is with the people at the present times. We have to be brave and confront challenging times.

This compromise has obviously not worked, and it will not work in the future. Just look at where we are now. While we share the same dream, your time as prime minister is up. We respectfully ask that you support Anwar Ibrahim as candidate for the premiership instead.

The decision to allow Anwar to become prime minister will be determined by the people. If Anwar is not chosen by the people, he can’t then argue that he was not given the chance anyway.

As Batman had said in the movie Dark Knight: You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

Now is your chance to change that.

by : James Davidson - Mkini