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By S. Ali Mahmud In my last week article entitled ‘Poor Invalid Dictator’, I encountered a comment about being grateful to Mahathir for all the developments he had brought into the country. As much as I like to agree, I would more incline to agree to disagree.
Before I dwell further, perhaps it is interesting to remind ourselves about how this man by the name of Mahathir remained as the country’s Prime Minister for more than two decades. One must not forget that how this man manipulated the democratic system of this country to ensure that he continues to be the leader of this country for the previous 22 years. Based on my recollection, when he was the president of UMNO, which technically made him president of the National Coalition party and hence the Prime Minister of this country, he barred anyone from challenging the presidency in UMNO. Thus, in reality, this man’s premiership is autocratic in nature and technically speaking, he was not really the leader the people of this country desired. His appointment as Prime Minister aside, when Mahathir assume the role as the leader of this country, it is his responsibilities then to ensure that he was able to administer this country in accordance to the wishes of the people. Whether or not he did that over the last 22 years of his administration, I would rather all of you be the judge as the facts would speak louder than what I write in this letter. Top that, whether or not we Malaysians should be grateful to him, on personal basis, I would so NO! I do not owe him any gratitude rather I think he ought to be grateful that despite his atrocities during his ‘reign’, the Malaysian public are polite enough to not incarcerate him. In that sense, Mahathir should be grateful to us, fellow Malaysians! As a matter of fact, we should no longer feel indebted towards our leaders. In a democratic country, leaders are ‘paid employee’ of the citizens of that particular country. They are therefore required to carry out whatever that are mandated to them by their boss. Similar to the concept of company, shareholders are actually the bosses of a company, thus creditors would go after the shareholders when a company is in liquidation and not the management. Management, in the country sense government, are appointed to carry out the administration of the country and ensure that the economy of the country continues to be solvent. To my mind, we should only be grateful towards those who truly deserved. In a political sense, only leaders who uphold justice and do not have personal interest (I know it sounds too ideal but there are still some genuine leaders around) who deserves appreciation. Else, I think we should just view them an employee. Did Mahathir really develop the country in the real sense? If yes, who really benefited from this development? What real development are we talking about? Let’s examine some aspects of developments and their results under the reign of Mahathir: o Education- Honestly, how many of you truly think the education system of our country is satisfactory? 50 years ago, those who merely attended school till standard six were able to speak and write both English and Bahasa Melayu well. Today, one who holds a degree is not guaranteed to be able to write properly. In the quest of dignifying the national language, most children today could hardly be fluent in either one of these languages, let alone to articulate them in writing. Beside those who are fortunate to have parents that willing to either spend extra money or time to either send their children to better schools or include additional classes such as tuition, children of those who could less afford become the victim of the education system. Looking through some of the text books and after talking to some, it is evident that the standard of education in our local public schools has deteriorated. The concept of education these days are merely ‘feed and spit’. Students are not taught the concept of think and analyse. There are times even teachers are unable to explain what they taught because they too are lack in the understanding of the subject matter. Thus, how would the process of education be interesting to these young minds? Often I feel sorry for them as I personally feel that if children are taught to learn, to understand, to analyse and to argue a particular subject matter, teaching and learning would be interesting because it should be a ‘two ways interactions’. The mindset of the young learning from the old ought to be set aside because teachers could probably learn from children too. Mahathir’s regime had turned the entire education system upside down. Though not all, but most of the students who studied under his education polices turned to become ‘submissive’ and with that Mahathir attained his objective of having a ‘compliance’ and ‘obedience’ society. o Infrastructure- I will not dispute that we have quite an acceptable infrastructures built throughout the nation. However, I wish to highlight that roads which are constructed properly are usually toll roads. Meaning public is and will continue to pay for the construction and the maintenance of these roads. As for the non toll roads, most of them are in quite appalling conditions save and except for the roads at the privilege society’s residential areas. In addition, the toll roads are usually those that linked to residential areas of middle and low income households, adding further financial burden to these groups. The mileage and toll rates would usually cost quite substantially to these households. o Buildings development- most Malaysians are proud of the PETRONAS Twin Tower. Mahathir once justified the building of this structure as putting the country’s on the global map. What a juvenile reason! How many of us think that the development of Putrajaya, KLCC and many other buildings are necessary? What happened to structures like Dayabumi and many others that are hardly occupied? In most countries, constructions of buildings are to accommodate the demands but in our country, buildings are built to become white elephants. Worst is the new buildings are usually structurally defect. Leakages seem to be a common problem. How much did the taxpayers pay for all these faulty structures? The man made lakes in Putrajaya, Wetland and Proton are amongst those disastrous projects! The over zealousness of developments factually is to popularise Mahathir and to enrich his cronies. The country’s ecological systems have been destroyed and sacrificed to pave way for the benefits of these ravenous contractors. As a result, the country now has to pay for various forms of natural disasters. o Social developments- What is the state of our society today? I can give you a few scenarios to ponder. Today, generally, the Malaysian society has turned materialistic, obtuse, self centred, racist, uncouth, arrogance, irresponsible and the list go on and on. Why does the society turn into such? Well, based on my calculation, this is the result of the government socio-political landscape as this would ensure that only the selected few would be empowered to rule the country whilst the mass majority continue to be the helpless citizens. Fears are instilled with the enforcement of draconian legislations such as the Internal Security Act (ISA) to curtail and impede those who speak up and revolt against Mahathir’s system. The absurdity of administration is further evident by our surroundings. For e.g. the ‘allergy’ of local councils and city halls to the natural plants which resulted in them being ct down and replaced with the fake/plastic trees seemed to be the priority of the local councils and city halls. I am still perplexed if members of these local councils and/or city halls are aware that plastic trees can never produce oxygen or absorb water like the natural tress? o Economy- This country is blessed with natural resources which could rightly made it another ‘dragon’ of Southeast Asia. Nonetheless, corruptions, unnecessary developments and wrong investments resulted in unnecessary wastage of this country’s income. Ever wonder why our country never seemed to be able to compete with Singaporean economy? Until this very day, I resent the success of Singapore (in a very positive way) as I know if the country is properly managed, we could have been either be as good as if not better than Singapore. This country appears to have all the wrong ingredients for its wealthy management. The employment of obtuse and dim-witted human capitals coupled by a tyrant leaderships definitely result in weak and wasteful economy. In terms of our country’s economic progression, we should turn green eye when our island republic neighbour is able to inject capital into world renowned institutions via its Sovereign Wealth Funds whereas our country’s investment arm is nothing but a mediocre investor. The list of investment by far has yet to impress me as these companies aren’t those that belonged to what I would call ‘A list’ companies. Even the Middle Eastern countries, which are lavish in their spending, are prudent to invest their wealth in worthy investments. Shouldn’t we all ask what happened to the revenues gained from the export of our black gold? We have seen how monies are spent extravagantly by building the ‘tallest’, ‘biggest’, ‘narrowest’ and almost ‘most crooked’ (or any other that would qualify to be in the World Guinness Record) without much considerations whether these would benefit the people of the country. Glamour appears to prevail over the necessity of projects to the public. Too much money has been spent on wasteful projects that purely benefit Mahathir, his cronies, the hand-kissing members of UMNO and gang. Perhaps it is worth to remember that this is the public’s money which neither belongs to Mahathir nor his cronies. Hence spending this money should rightly benefit the entire population of this nation rather than the selected ones. To continue writing about how much destructions Mahathir had done to this country probably would require me to produce them in entire encyclopaedia’s version. However, the aforementioned are merely the summary of what I am able to think of for time being. The only credit I probably would generously give to Mahathir is his brevity to disagree with the superpower. My fellow countrymen, we never owe our leaders anything. We appoint them to serve us and to carry out jobs and mandates that we desire. They are all compensated with decent remunerations and exempted from paying income taxes. That is rewarding enough. If they are not satisfied, perhaps they ought not to offer themselves to be in politics.
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Or compared to my old Kampung or 9) Any Kampung if you are from one 
