KINIBIZ Tiger was already familiar with vehicles and especially four-wheel drives that made the occasional foray into Tiger’s habitat and scared its wits off. But after a while Tiger realised those inside were more afraid of him than he of them.

But when those strange flying objects in the sky came, with their accompanying drone, Tiger was perplexed until he found out about aeroplanes and the new quick way of getting from place to place. And airlines came about - our buses in the clouds.

And thus was born our own airline, now known as Malaysia Airlines, owned by Malaysian Airline System or MAS, government-owned of course now, through Khazanah Nasional with nearly 70 percent.

To come back to our story, former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad was asked his opinion over the weekend, when news is terribly short, on privatising MAS. He said that could be the answer to the airline’s woes.

You see, he explained, if MAS remained a government-linked company, then the perception might be that it was okay to lose money. But if you privatised it well, there will be a great focus on cutting costs and making money, and presto, the airline will make money.

And horror of horrors, even for a Tiger that has seen some horrible things, he gave the example of Proton, which he said became profitable after it went to private hands, in this case presumably his crony and friend Syed Mokhtar Albukhary through DRB-Hicom.

Poor Mahathir! Either he is suffering from a serious case of selective amnesia which is in the realm of degenerative disease or he is deliberately misleading as many people as he can by a wilful and deceitful omission of vital facts. But he can’t fool Tiger, and Tiger will tell all.

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This article was written by P Gunasegaram.