Mahathir

For 22 years he was the head honcho of Malaysia's political landscape, Malaysia's roving ambassador to the world. Malaysia's boon for 2 decades was Mahathir and Malaysia's impending downfall and bane will once again be due to Mahathir.

This man took the floor and ended his speech to a quick and thunderous standing ovation at Stanford University.

This same man, also engineered the biggest financial coup in our nation's history as assets from our largest and best government machinery in the form of Lembaga Letrik Negara (LLN), Jabatan Telekom was quickly bundled and transfered into private holdings to finance his fledgling UMNO BARU in the early 90s

Malaysia's meteoric and economic miracle is due to this one brilliant man. HE held the country and ran it like with iron fist. He silenced any individual critics and dismantling pillars of democracy or any mechanism of check and balances as he lassoed the entire nation together and dragged her kicking, screaming and ultimately totally broken to where he wants the nation to be.

HE is a dictator to one and a statesman to another. Like all dictators and statesman he left a vacuum. A vacuum so large, it's void spanned, engulf and consumed the entire nation's political, social, economic fabric.

From the grandiose Putrajaya and the conceptually brilliant MSC to the Singapore Scenic Bridge and his push for industrialization in the form of the Bakun Dam and Perwaja. These will remain legacies of a man who almost thinks he is too good for an idyllic Malaysia. In his mind, Malaysia needed symbols of success and it was his duty to put these symbols in place. Democracy and check and balances were mere obstacles to his version of progress.

Like all dictators and emperors and the most beautiful of flowers, there will be bees, and they came from far and wide, placating this old man with gold, honey and promises. Thus the Malaysia Inc. was born, tacked as another one of Mahathir's braichild, albeit it was his cronies who benefitted. The entire policy was nothing more than a label for cronism and favoritism as the Government machinery takes an active hand in business and industry. Civil servants and political parties curry for favours under this system of political patronage. Questionable, corrupt, illegal and downright dirty practices were further shrouded under the implementation of the NEP. Questions and critics are merely defended by the paper-thin and undefendable NEP coupled with zealous rhethorics on religion and race. Intellectual discourse and openes was never the way the Mahathir administration operates. It was never about the rakyat, but about his cronies extending their reach and control over you, over the old man and most important of all, the feeding on the fear and insecurities of the rakyat

Empires, regimes and dynasties do not last forever simply because Emperors and Maharajahs are mortals and soon enough incompetence and greed will quickly fill, consume and further expand any void of an altruistic leader (even if there is such a thing).

This is post-Mahathir Malaysia. Our social, political and economic fabric are tearing at the seams as we grapple with our existence trying to hold on to the sarong of the man who have sheltered us from the storm. We need the check and balances of a real democratic nation, we need the mechanism of a democracy to be reinstalled and most of all we need to step out of the shadows of the old man and begin to chart our own destiny.

The old man is no more and the quicker he is out of our memories the better it will be for all of us, as we must quickly pick up the pieces, mend our fort and move on concerted and cohesive, fully accountable to one another that we are a nation of people and not a nation of rent seekers and economic parasites.

The old man must go and he must be forgotten.