It is said that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin inspired such fear that even after he died and was lying motionless on the floor, it was reportedly nine hours before anyone dared to approach his body to make sure he was really dead.

The nine hours since Dr Mahathir Mohamad's "political death" appear to be finally coming to a close. There may still be some final violent twitches - watch for an interesting Umno general assembly next year - but it has become clear that Mahathir's iron rule is truly over.

In fact, the only person who does not seem to have achieved this clarity is Mahathir himself. Which is not surprising. When you have spent close to a quarter century as an autocrat surrounded by supine, self-serving sycophants and ruling over a fearful and pliant populace, it must be difficult to let go, to realise that it is no longer your way or the highway.

It is Dr M himself who is being guided - gently at present, although that may not last long - to the highway.

What did he expect, that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi would remain the "soft" stop-gap before Najib is ready to take over? Having been intimately involved in Umno's cut-throat politics all his life, Mahathir should have known better.

Abdullah may have won more admiration in the last few weeks than he did during the entire period of his tenure as prime minister so far. While everybody made the right noises, not many people regarded him as anything more than a nice guy who has been given his little turn in the spotlight. But he is showing unexpected steel by facing up to the bluster of his predecessor with dignity and class.

Mahathir is worried about his own legacy. Actually, there isn't much of it when you go behind the political correctness. He was a "democratic dictator" who dumped perceived opponents within his own party with regularity. Musa, Razaleigh, Ghafar, Anwar ... the list goes on.

Under his watch, a one-time deputy prime minister was beaten within an inch of death by his police chief.

People in his government (and their young children) were converted overnight into billionaires. They must have known a magical way to turn their relatively modest ministerial salaries and parenting skills into gold!

He is often credited with turning Malaysia into an economic success story. What success? Malaysia is such a lucky country in terms of resources, infrastructure and people - and the work done by Mahathir's predecessors, starting with Tunku Abdul Rahman - that it would need an utter idiot to not succeed economically.

In fact, history will probably show that Mahathir planted the seeds for the country's economic failures. The education system is shot, make no mistake about it. "Star" institutions such as MAS, Proton and numerous others have achieved the dubious distinction of making huge losses while being monopolies in so many ways.

Of course, we cannot forget the "Guinness Book" achievements - tall buildings, etc. But those are no achievements. What's the achievement in throwing enough money to erect tall buildings?

Clearly, Mahathir had been hoping to emulate Lee Kuan Yew's "senior minister" status. That's not going to happen for a lot of reasons. Apart from the fact that Kuan Yew, despite his similar autocratic ways, is actually an intellectually brilliant man, he also didn't make as many influential enemies within his own ruling party as Mahathir did.

The knives are now out. It has become clear that standing up to the former prime minister is no longer a risky proposition. Watch for the attacks to become more and more vicious unless the good doctor finally sees the writing on the wall - or better still, someone in his circle points it out to him - and decides to start tending the no doubt ample garden in his backyard.

Nobody will be sad at such a development.