From Terence Netto
Dr Mahathir Mohamad is the chief spawner of Malay political disunity.
And he is a crafty deflector of the blame that should accrue to him.
This is so because Mahathir viewed dissent within Umno—the main Malay party he led for 22 years—as a threat rather than something normal for democratic political parties.
This disposition fostered the formation of Semangat 46 and although the party led by his Umno rival, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, folded and rejoined Umno, that first Malay splinter set the pattern of periodic bouts of dissent within the mother party spawning breakaways.
None of this ought to surprise seasoned observers of politics.
Dissent in democratic parties mutates into dissidence when authoritarian supremos exclude rather than coopt dissenters.
Mahathir did that to the Tengku Razaleigh cohort that challenged him in the contest for positions in Umno during the 1987 party elections.
Eleven years later, swelling dissent within Umno led to Mahathir adopting the same exclusionary tactics towards the Anwar Ibrahim cohort, causing another splinter party, Parti Keadilan Nasional, to form and after morphing to become Parti Keadilan Rakyat, to challenge for national power.
After years of restiveness in Umno receded to allow Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to succeed Mahathir as Umno president and prime minister in October 2003, Mahathir disdained to allow Badawi to let the approaching internal Umno party election in 2004 to resolve the issue of who was to be Badawi’s deputy.
Badawi was compelled by Mahathir to choose Najib Razak as deputy president and DPM in January 2004, leaving the PM to weather the antagonism of the overlooked Muhyiddin Yassin when a party election was the sanest way to resolve the issue.
Mahathir was not content to allow the chips to fall where they may, even if they were destined via a democratic election to do so.
An authoritarian bent disposed him towards controlling things that were best left to the wisdom of the choosers.
It was no surprise, then, that Mahathir soon fell out with PM Badawi and when Badawi was forced into early retirement, it was successor Najib’s turn to face the chopping block.
In the latter instance, however, it can be said in extenuation that Najib had invited Mahathir’s hostility by being enmeshed in the IMDB imbroglio.
Still, Mahathir is a divisive figure.
It’s rather rich for him after all the division he has caused—he ran through three deputy premiers during the time he was head honcho and has personally been responsible for forming three splinter parties—that the Malays are the authors of their disunity.
It’s like Macbeth saying to Banquo’s ghost who haunts him after duke’s multiple murders: “Thou canst not say I did it.”
Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.