It must feel strange for many Malaysians to wake up to a Malaysia without Dr M as our prime minister.

The myth of leadership cult propagated by the media has conditioned many Malaysians to think of our PM as a larger-than-life phenomenon, almost as permanent as the mountains and the seas.

A great deal of hero worship is only to be expected. for Malaysians, Dr M's star status has far-outstripped that of Jacky Chan or Arnold what's-his-unpronounceable-name, because of his relevance to their life. Part of the reason could be that Jacky Chan and Arnold Schwazzz never received such attention in the local media as our prime minister.

I thought personality cult can only be possible in a dictatorial country where the autocrat could pronounce absolute truths from the podium of a state owned media. I am thinking of Mao Tze Tung in China, during the tumultuous days of the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976.

Not any more. Even in developed democracies, the television remains the number one choice for consumers of information and entertainment, well ahead of the Internet. American presidential elections have become an expensive advertisement war between the contending candidates, and a contender with the looks of Abraham Lincoln would not have the slightest chance of winning the race.

Despite the numerous studies conducted by the mass communication departments in universities all over the world, I do not believe they have uncovered the true powers of the media and how people's thinking and behaviour can be affected by them.

Just imagine! Dr M's kindly visage has been beamed into the sitting rooms of millions of Malaysian homes for the past 22 years. For Malaysians of all ages, his face is as familiar as an elderly person in the family.

Secret mantra?

Daily, the news-readers at the various radio stations parrot his name with such reverence you would think it has become the secret mantra to Malaysian greatness. The major dailies dutifully splash his pictures and words of wisdom across the front page, as if Dr M is God's greatest gift to humanity.

Of course, his leaving office officially yesterday has to be a national event. The opulent orgy of tributes flooding the electronic and print media in Malaysia borders on the hysterical. I made the mistake of buying an English tabloid for the advertisements. The Mahathir Special has to be a fine example of ostentatiously crony journalism at its twisted best.

I am sure many of those who pay tributes to Dr M upon his retirement mean it with all their heart and soul. The tears you see on television and newspaper images may or may not be real particularly from politicians. Having been one myself, and living and working at close range with politicians of all shapes and hues for nearly two decades, I am very sceptical about tears shed by politicians under the glare of the media limelight.

Frankly, I admire Tok Guru Nik Mat Nik Aziz for saying "thank you" to Dr M. I am convinced that he meant it. Whether you mean it or not does not actually justify those tributes expressed in unrealistic superlatives. But coming from Tok Guru, it is refreshing. It means that you do not have to demonise your political opponent and resort to mud slinging all the time.

It is called fairness, a concept that is largely absent from our political life on both sides of the floor in the Dewan Rakyat. Blanket condemnation of Dr M's long and controversial career is as distasteful to me as the blanket glorification now polluting the imagined space of our media.

Surely, the man cannot be capable of so much good or so much evil. He is just another human being for God's sake!

Unpalatable thinking

Some tribute-addicts have glorified Dr M's longevity in office, as evidence of his exceptional leadership quality and the people's love and support for looking after their welfare. Frankly, that kind of thinking is really unpalatable to me. (I am tempted to use much stronger language than merely "unpalatable".)

If Malaysia is to be both a thriving democracy and a flourishing economy, then it may be unnatural or even undesirable to have a prime minister with such dubious distinction of longevity in office. The only virtue you can assign to his long tenure of office is that he is a Machiavellian par excellence . And I am not sure being a great Machiavellian is such a virtue to begin with. A great Machiavellian may be only the meanest xxxx in the whole Valley of Shadow of Death.

I am not here to assess the achievements and failures of the prime minister who has ruled us for about half of our independent national life. Many writers on malaysiakini have done an excellent job in that department. In any case, a final assessment may not be possible now; we will need to witness the actual unfolding of events in the months and years ahead.

I am more interested in examining the political life of Malaysia, especially this madness of deifying and mystifying an ordinary human being who happens to wield awesome political power as our prime minister. There are two conclusions to be drawn.

Firstly, the overwhelming image of Dr. M as manifest through the media is one of a Big Protector. His popularity is based on delivering his promise that if you surrender to him all your power and responsibility, he will guarantee your survival, your family welfare, and your paradise on earth.

As the Big Protector, he will defend you against all menacing enemies. Exactly what these enemies are depends on who you are.

For some Malays, the threat is the ever-present menace from the grabbing greedy descendants of the early Chinese immigrants, especially the communists and the chauvinistic extremists. For many Chinese and other non-Malays, the threat would be the racial and religious fanatics among the Malays. Then, there is the catch-all image of the menacing Leviathan from the West, with the global Jewish conspiracy thrown in for good measure.

This rampant Big Brother Syndrome among Malaysians is an indication that, as a nation, we are far from being a mature democracy. A people that is so driven by all-enveloping fear for the menacing Other, until they have to depend heavily on the reassuring protection of an all powerful god-like figure, will not easily find the resolve, innovativeness, and the courage to take full responsibility for their own destiny and the destiny of their country.

This psychological dependence on the umbrella protection of a Big Protector, cast in the mesmerising halo of a legendary hero, will only perpetuate the rule of man, not that of law. It betrays the pervasive ethos of a people living in the appearance of a democratic structure, while their mind dwells in the feudalism nascent to the seedier levels of various Asian traditions.

Operation Lalang

My second conclusion is that this psychosis of homage frenzy has its roots in the events of Operation Lalang.

The dramatic upheavals before and after Operation Lalang in October 1987 marked the real turning point in Dr M's long political career. In those short years, he rewrote the rules of dealing with the rulers and the judiciary, increasing the power of the prime minister beyond the dreams of his predecessors.

Nevertheless, the most effective instrument of silencing opposition and other critical voices was the shutting down of the independent Sin Chew Jit Po , and the really vibrant Star of that era. In one fell swoop, the best crop of Malaysian journalism was made to feel disillusioned beyond redemption, leaving the subsequent vacuum to the opportunistic and the ambitious.

The aura of terror for fear of losing their investment also propelled media ownership to interfere with the editorial policies of the paper to increasing extents. Given the close link between political power and big business, it is not surprising that the media has been completely cowed. Without any possibility of ever criticising Dr M in the press, it is easy for the media to generate the mirage that he is universally loved and revered in the public domain.

All great political leaders know in their heart that they cannot be universally loved by their constituents. Sir Winston Churchill found that out after the war. It was he who said something to the effect that, for every tribute paid in public to a national leader, there would be 10 private condemnations uttered with horrible venom.

Therefore, this ugly business of paying frenzied homage and adoration to Dr M in the media is an affront to Truth, and does not do justice to the retiring prime minister as a distinguished and complex human being. But then, he will just have to sleep in the bed that he had cut out for himself.

Meanwhile, I also wonder: what is going through the mind of Anwar Ibrahim this very day, as he ponders upon his fate in Sungei Buloh. Where Dr Mahathir has just ended his political journey amidst much pomp and honour, Anwar Ibrahim's real political journey may have just begun.

I think they will think much about each other in the days to come.