COMMENT In April 1982, days before the 6th general election, Mohd Asri Muda, the then PAS president, was asked about his assessment of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who had been in office as the fourth prime minister of the country some nine months.

Asri, himself a shrewd observer of political events and the people who shape them, offered the view that one could predict the behaviour and reaction of the first three prime ministers - Tunku Abdul Rahman, Abdul Razak Hussein, and Hussein Onn.

He said the new man at the helm of the country was going to be different from his predecessors in that he would not be predictable.

The PAS chief was speaking in the immediate aftermath of a rather startling development.

This was Mahathir's success at drawing Anwar Ibrahim away from the presidency of the Malaysian Muslim Youth Movement (Abim) into the ranks of Umno where he would begin as candidate for the Permatang Pauh parliamentary constituency in Penang in the upcoming polls...