Lim Kit Siang, the Democratic Action Party chairman, is right : the government's response to the Economist' s survey articles o­n Malaysia, published April 5, was "so skimpy that it is totally unpersuasive".

Written by the National Economic Action Council chief Mustapha Mohamed ( photo ), the letter appeared in the British journal's letters pages o­n May 8. It didn't demand an apology but listed a few gripes over the articles' criticisms, mostly of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's "qualified success" in ruling the country and o­n the coming "changing of the guard" from Mahathir to his anointed heir Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

The Economist , for its part, responded with an apology for just o­ne factual error - the ethnic quotas for university entry, which was replaced last year by a merit system. It has already drawn sharp criticisms from non-Malays who see a government still loathed to rid its racially-based policy o­n higher education.

But largely, the journal ignored the government's grievances. And deservedly. For the tiresome fluster-and-bluster that Umno's neo-nationalist sycophants had breathed for all of a week - and three weeks after the articles were published - the much-vaunted response fizzled like a wounded tiger snorting out its last puff of hot air.

Najib's job

Lim argued the matter amounted to a "storm in a tea-cup" and was quick to blame the "frenzy" o­n Najib Tun Razak ( photo ), the defence minister and Umno No 2 aspirant in the post-Mahathir government. Lim suggested that a point-by-point 'rebuttal' should have been left to Najib. Good call, since it would have showed up Najib's own inadequacies, which could have damaged his political ambition.

Which may explain why Abdullah had left Najib well alone - to maximise the damage to Najib's position in the Umno Supreme Council. But o­n the eve of Mahathir's return from abroad, even Abdullah became trapped in the swirling Barisan Nasional codswallop.

Was the storm caused by the Economist o­ne that brewed o­nly in a tea-cup? Hardly. But Mustapha's letter clearly exposes the intellectual incompetence within Umno, Barisan Nasional and the Mahathir government. Even Mahathir had failed to respond intelligently. Frighteningly, given that most of the same faces will probably re-appear in the Abdullah cabinet and government, the letter displays, at o­ne level, the sheer knee-jerk propensity of Malaysia's politicians. At another level it highlights, yet again, the Mahathir government's feckless, puerile folly and pomposity. This was also revealed by the Economist' s analysis.

After the promised point-by-point counter to the Economist' s claims, what comprised the five-paragraph letter effortlessly fizzled into a mindless and predictable diatribe at projecting an image of self-deluded grandeur.

Mostly, though, Mustapha felt the desperate need - no, obligation - to be seen to defend Mahathir while paying tribute to Malaysia's political puppet master. Conversely, like Mahathir and his minions in the BN, Mustapha launched into denial which, under Mahathir's 22-year regime, has become the hallmark of the regime's defence of the increasingly indefensible.

Never mind whether Mahathir's popularity is at its "pinnacle"; anyone can rent a crowd and pack them at airports or into Stadium Merdeka. Money talks, and Umno knows this o­nly too well. And with the mainstream media so tightly controlled by the regime's business cronies, spin-doctoring and other subterfuges are common ploys for regime legitimacy and survival.

Believability, though, becomes the casualty of a regime that's constantly big o­n hype and hubris when significant political, social and economic problems remain embedded in a political economy that refuses to shake off its spots after the carnage wrought by the late 1990s Asian crisis.

Memory lapses

Still Mustapha asked the Economist to tell who are the "many Malaysians" who see Mahathir "as the jailer than a guardian of his people". In case Mustapha - and Mahathir - have suddenly suffered memory lapses, start with Operation Lallang in October 1987. If Mustapha and other Mahathir supporters are honest, they'll work back a few years and forward many years more to see how Mahathir has wielded brutal authoritarian power. And in true Stalinist form, Mahathir has wilfully jailed more than he has freed those who dare oppose his feudal lordship.

If pro-Mahathirists still remain blessedly ignorant, they should ask former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim. Or perhaps their erstwhile ally, the former police chief Abdul Rahim Noor, who had cowardly blackened Anwar's eye while Anwar was in jail.

Abdul Rahim lied to Malaysians (and the world), and took five months before confessing his crime. And Mahathir had daftly and blithely said Anwar had blackened his own eye. In Mahathir's democratic Malaysia, he jails political dissidents but criminals like Abdul Rahim got away with a slap o­n the wrist. Besides, since 1988, Mahathir has systematically bastardised Malaysian judicial autonomy from the state.

Does Mustapha need more? Recall Bank Bumiputra's Bumiputra Malaysia Finance, Maminco, Employees Provident Fund and Makuwasa, Pan-Electric Industries, the Deposit-Taking Cooperatives, Perwaja and other scandals. Their architects should have been thoroughly investigated by police and hauled up before the courts to answer allegations of fraud and other crimes. So far, zilch.

With the judiciary politically stacked and without any chance of an independent parliamentary inquiry, the government's cover-up is made easier. It protects the infamous who, curiously, are festooned as entrepreneurial models in Mahathir's ersatz capitalist Malaysia Inc that is so riddled with corruption and cronyism.

Hair-splitting

And still Mustapha asked the Economist to explain its claim that "[U]nder Malaysia's version of America's Patriot Act, "ministers have almost unfettered discretion to hold suspects for an initial 60 days." Mustapha adds: "This will be news to Malaysia's ministers, not a single o­ne of whom has fettered or unfettered discretion 'to hold suspects'. This power lies with the police."

Mustapha's hair-splitting is glaring. The reason why these crooks in the scandals, and the sleazy rentier capitalists whom Mahathir has nurtured during his reign, have gotten away with their shenanigans is because of the regime's frequent abuse of a panoply of anti-democratic legislation, like the Internal Security Act and the Official Secrets Act.

The ISA is a cowardly act of which the police, especially the disreputable Special Branch, are its instruments of state terror. It's not hard to grasp how o­ne could conclude the implicit and tacit approval accorded to such cowardly legislation by ministers who use it wilfully to shield their questionable legitimacy. Just watch some of Umno's big crooks make stunning political comebacks.

The Economist is right to argue that Malaysia under Mahathir is a "qualified success", that the economic success that Mahathirists keep boasting is questionable. A rigorous analysis of the 30 years of the New Economic Policy and its chameleon of the last 13 years, the New Development Plan, shows a highly imbalanced economic development that has done some of the most irreparable damage to Malaysia's o­nce-pristine environment by cowboy capitalists and the regime while increasing inequalities between and within the races.

So much for the much-vaunted five-year plans since 1970-1 that were aimed at noble causes in the name of nation-building by creating a Bangsa Malaysia (Malaysian race) by 2020. Truth is, Mahathir's Vision 2020 has amounted to no more than a 10-20 vision that has enriched Malaysia's rentier capitalists and BN feudal lords at the expense of the rising masses of the poor.

Yet Malaysians worship Mahathir as though he were a demi-god. That's plainly foolish, since probably o­nly half the 'success' for which his supporters claim is attributable to chiefly Mahathir is in fact ascribable to a multitude of complex endogenous factors, including timing. Doing otherwise also plainly ignores the greater social forces that were at work outside Malaysia that had given Malaysia some lucky breaks for its post mid-80s industrialisation trajectory.

The strength of the economy between 1991 and 1997 had nothing to do with Mahathir whatsoever. Malaysia rode o­n a wave that began with the Plaza and Louvre agreements over US dollar-yen recalibrations that spawned increased East Asian industrial activity and global hot-money flows.

Greater intolerance

But if loyalists still insist that Mahathir is responsible for Malaysia's success, then he should also be held accountable for the many serious problems that he has wrought o­n Malaysia's multi-racial citizens - the political and the socio-economic inequalities that non-Malays and even the Malays have suffered under his rule and continue to suffer under a regime determined to pursue racist policies.

Nation-building has never progressed much since 1969. For all the rhetoric o­n Bangsa Malaysia , of a new national community that'll be tolerant and liberal in full and fair partnership among the races, there's more evidence of greater intolerance and illiberalism in Malaysia. And Mahathir has to carry the can for this.

The Economist is right, among other things: Mahathir should also be held responsible for squandering opportunities for real economic reforms after the Asian crisis. Instead, he has been too busy protecting the crony and corruption ridden Malaysia Inc while shoring up his personal popularity, which, oddly enough, is not unlike what Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's thuggish prime minister, has also been doing.

Great shame Mahathir didn't quit 10-15 years ago; things may well have turned out differently for all Malaysians today.

MANJIT BHATIA is managing director of AsiaRisk - a political and economic research and risk analysis consultancy in Australia. The writer specialises in international economics and politics and the Asia Pacific region.