Tok Mat has got it wrong on Dr M’s success

Tok Mat has got it wrong on Dr M’s success



From Terence Netto

Umno deputy president Mohamad Hasan is what you call a progressive leader.

That is, he is a national political leader who can survey the horizon of circumstance and point party and country in a constructive and viable direction.

In his recent public pronouncements he was not averse to acknowledging that Malaysia is a multi-racial, multi-religious country.

If Umno were to return to rule again, he has said, it would be better done in concert with other political groups.

In other words, Malays would have to wield political primacy but must avoid dominance.

The former accords a proper – as distinct to an inordinate – regard for Malay political and economic interests; the later invites hallucinations and myopia.

His pronouncements identify Tok Mat as a centrist Umno leader, more interested in seeking and promoting consensus than in pushing a unilateralist stance.

Campaign rhetoric is not where one finds what is wholesome and prudent.

As election director for Barisan Nasional for today’s vote in Malacca, Tok Mat has had to say much that is not wholesome and prudent, which is understandable in straits like these.

Take what he said about how great leaders could only be so and backed by strong parties or coalitions.

He cited Dr Mahathir Mohamad in his first stint of 22 years as prime minister as an example.

He said Mahathir was successful in his first PM-ship only because he had the backing of a strong BN.

He argued that Mahathir’s second stint as PM, over a 22-month period, was a failure because the Pakatan Harapan coalition supporting him was driven by incoherence and division.

Hence he wanted Malaccans to give BN a strong mandate so that a good Umno leader could leverage on that to give the people effective governance.

Firstly, it is debatable whether Mahathir’s first stint as PM was successful. He built up the country physically but warped it morally.

He destroyed the independence of the judiciary, disrespected the neutrality of the civil service, allowed the integrity of the police force to be compromised, centralised power in the office of the Umno president thus neutering its supreme council, and harboured mediocrity in its ranks so long as these were loyal to him as president.

Mahathir was an authoritarian PM while Umno was a compliant accessory and BN a subservient underling. His prolonged tenure as PM bred the problems of racial and religious polarisation that now bedevil the nation.

Mahathir was a self-inflicted failure as a Pakatan Harapan PM.

He betrayed the coalition’s reformist ideals because he did not believe in them and cynically disregarded its agenda once he achieved his principal aim, which was to get rid of Najib Razak as PM.

Mahathir used Pakatan Harapan and duly scuttled it when he declined to fulfil his oft-repeated pledge to hand over the PM’s post to Anwar Ibrahim in mid-passage.

In the two instances of his premiership, Mahathir stayed in character as a user of the strong (Umno), which he then brought to decay, and of the useful (Pakatan Harapan), which he promptly scuttled after he had gained his chief purpose.

Mahathir exemplifies Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic: one who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

If Tok Mat is to bring to fruition the promising themes of his ideas and propositions of recent times, he will restore value to Umno’s original centrist values to avert more deleterious costs to the nation of the forfeiture begun in Mahathir’s first phase as PM.