Never imagine that I would be blogging about this old fox Mahathir. This is one character which I wouldn't be surprised that history will judged him far more severely when what he had sowed during his years of premiership catches up with him. Some bits are already starting to appear.
Don't be beguiled by him. He had a hypnotic influence over too many people. How do I explain what he has said is nonsense; lies dressed up as simple logic and passed off as true. If you pushed him further, he would likely say just look next door in Thailand and then wiggle off to another direction. He was frustrating for our leaders to work with, always changing his mind and stretching the meaning of words.
Mahathir's strategy of deception is like a good movie which is believable but false. I can think of several: Jurassic Park, Da Vinci Code and the X-files series on TV. There are many more. He is a master of gross over simplification. If you know the subject well, i.e. the details and the relationships among the details, you know he is a fraud.
1. Arab Spring had overwhelming support from the people. This is not true yet for Malaysia. He hadn't used Thailand as an example because it didn't succeed at bringing down the government.
2. Point 2 is just padding. You could skip that but he needed it to join up with his next point.
3. Again nonsense. In Malaysia unlike the Arab states people are unhappy but not to the same degree or as angry as those over there. Furthermore in Syria, Assad uses brutal force. He is still standing. In fact the rebels could not win without massive external help. Nobody is going to provide Malaysian rebels such support.
4. Point 4 is padding too. Skip.
5. My Point 1 and Point 3 would make Mahathir's Point 5 untenable. It simply isn't going to happen.
The rest of his points are now not worth discussing except I like the cleverness as usual of how he rounds it up at the end because this is what most people would take away after they have long forgotten what he had said earlier. Hearers would agree with him that street demonstrations are a dangerous and terrible idea.
Vintage Mahathir is a first rate communicator but in half truths and twisted truths.
I remember reading in his book "The Malay Dilemna", he wrote that if the Chinese did not bribe the Malays in Malaysia, the Malays would not have been so corrupt today. And he reasoned that this is because the Chinese has been corrupt for centuries ever since the old Imperial China days.
ReplyDeleteHe himself was once rumoured to be the 10% Prime Minister by the Japanese media. So were the Japanese then just as corrupt as the Chinese ?
Talking about blaming others except oneself for own's own vices.