An Open Letter to Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad

From the FB page of:

Betty Teh

An Open Letter to Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad

Dear Tun,

About a month ago, a colleague of mine learned that she has stage four cancer. It is inoperable. From that moment, her life changed shape. When medicine can no longer offer cure, it offers something else instead: clarity. The kind that forces a person to confront how they have lived, what they have done with power, and what will remain after they are gone.

She now lives with the knowledge that time is finite. And with that knowledge often comes reflection, sometimes regret about choices made, words spoken, and paths taken.

Medicine teaches us something important about such moments.

In the elderly, hip fracture surgery is not the reckless option many assume it to be. In fact, evidence consistently shows that surgical management carries a lower risk of death and better functional outcomes than conservative treatment. Surgery allows earlier mobilisation, reduces complications of immobility, and improves survival. Nonoperative care, by contrast, is associated with markedly higher mortality, often within months.

In other words, the higher risk choice is often not to operate.

And yet, in your case, the decision was clearly not based purely on comorbidities, or medical evidence. It was based on something else entirely.
Your name.

No surgeon or anaesthetist would easily accept the prospect of seeing their name broadcast across every headline should you die on the operating table. That fear is human. But it reveals how power distorts even clinical judgment, how reputation, symbolism, and legacy can outweigh evidence.

At one hundred years old, mortality is no longer theoretical. No one escapes time, and no one misunderstands its nearness at that age. The question, then, is not how long remains, but how it is used.
This is why I write: not to rehearse grievances, not to argue politics, not to provoke defensiveness but to ask for something rarer.
Reflection.

You are not merely a former prime minister. You are a historical figure whose ideas profoundly shaped Malaysia and in shaping it, also constrained it. You were undeniably brilliant but you were also undeniably wrong about many things.

This is the moment for moral reckoning.

Not moral theatre. Not self justification. But an honest examination of how race became a tool of power rather than a responsibility of stewardship. How control was mistaken for stability. How institutions were bent in the name of order. How legacy was curated rather than confronted.

You have always been a man who wanted to control the narrative.

If you remain silent, or if you spend your final days nursing old political wounds, you cede that control to history.

Redeem your intellect by being honest with us. Help us understand the man behind the doctor, the leader behind the dogma. Give us a reason to remember you for your honesty in the end, rather than your stubbornness throughout.

Write to us, not as a politician seeking vindication, but as a man standing at the edge of consequence. Explain the decisions only you can explain, while you still can. Do not leave your story to be shaped by politicians who invoke your name for convenience, or by admirers who refuse to acknowledge your contradictions.

Let us judge you not by mythology, nor by resentment, but by what you choose to say now when power no longer protects you, and time no longer negotiates.

The nation is ready to listen, Tun. Not to the politician, but to the man.

Yours sincerely,

Betty Teh

A woman who is always too forgiving
A woman who would love to interview you