It is hypocritical of Mahathir to condemn the law that he himself had created

It is hypocritical of Mahathir to condemn the law that he himself had created


1 Feb 2024



TheRealNehruism
Writer. Seeker. Teacher

When the police make a random roadblock and stop you to check your license and road tax, can you claim that the police are accusing you of not having the proper documents without proof and they are threatening to arrest you if you don’t stop? Of course not. The right way to look at it, according to people like Mahathir once upon a time ago, is to see authorities like the police as good and righteous people, and unless you have done something wrong, you have no reason not to cooperate with them.


Is it correct to always look at the authorities as being on the side of all that is right and good while considering a failure of cooperating with the authorities as a sign that one is on the side of wrong? I don’t know. But what I do know is that it is people like Mahathir that taught us to look at things in this way.


“Kalau awak tak salah, kenapa takut,” is the logic that people like Mahathir used when they were in power, to force the rest of us to cooperate with them, as if it is a self-evident that they are on the side of what is good and right, and we are definitely in the wrong if we don’t cooperate with them.


Mahathir was not shy to use this logic when he was in power either. Ask Anwar and everybody else that Mahathir had punished by using laws like the ISA just because they did not cooperate with him.


Today however, Mahathir is complaining that his sons are being threatened by the authorities, just because the MACC are “stopping” his son to check for his “documentations.”



"My son was threatened that if he does anything related to the allegation, he will be imprisoned for five years,” Mahathir laments.


What Mahathir means by this claim is that if his sons cannot provide MACC with the proper “documentation” to prove that they are not guilty of the accusation that MACC believes that they are guilty of, they might be considered guilty of the crime that they have been accused of and punished by MACC.


I don’t understand why Mahathir is complaining against this sort of treatment, when it was he that had normalised this sort of treatment in the country in the first place.


He is the one who taught us that if you are stopped at a police roadblock, simply because the police are assuming that you might have done something wrong, you are supposed to cooperate with them, answer their questions, give them what they want and even let them search your person and your property to prove that you have not done anything wrong.



If you refuse to cooperate with the police and insist that the police have no right to ask or search you for anything because their doubt has no basis, that all you are doing is driving home after having your supper at a mamak without breaking any law, they are perfectly entitled to assume that you have done something wrong and detain you.


Just because they detain you, you cannot claim that the police have threatened you with punishment although you have not done anything wrong. The right way to look at this sort of situation, according to the teachings of Mahathir himself, is that your refusal to cooperate with the police gives the authorities the right to consider you as being guilty of something.


Mahathir needs to understand that the treatment that the authorities are giving his sons are actually normal treatments that a regular citizen can expect to get from our authorities. We get it all the time, at a place like a police roadblock.



Mahathir is likely only considering it to be abnormal, because he is used to telling people “Kalau awak tak salah, kenapa takut.” He is not used to people telling him “Kalau awak tak salah, kenapa takut”.


This change is happening, because Mahathir used to be in power once upon a time ago, but today he is just a regular citizen. Today, he is not even an MP or a head of a party. Being a regular citizen, he should start to acclimatise himself to the realities of a regular citizen, which he himself had caused to exist, with his practises in the years that he was in power.


By his own standards, he should advice his sons to accept that MACC is on the side of all that is right and good, and if his sons are truly law abiding citizens, they should cooperate with MACC, provide MACC with what MACC asks for and let MACC search their person and property.



Instead of ridiculously claiming that it is unjust for MACC to ask his sons to provide for the receipts for the nasi lemak and kopi they had 42 years ago, which only makes him sound foolish and desperate , He should encourage his sons to cooperate with MACC.


He should believe, just like he wanted us to believe, that the authorities are always on the side of good and right, and if his sons are innocent, they will not be harmed by the authorities.


Afterall, according to him, his sons had made their wealth by their own merit. If they made their wealth by their own merit, what is there to fear?

Nehru Sathiamoorthy is the author of “While Waiting for the World to end”. He was a columnist at FMT and a frequent contributor to the South China Morning Post, Malaysia-Today, MalaysiaNow, MalaysiaKini and Focus Malaysia.