COMMENT | The unregenerate Mahathir

COMMENT | Barely had the ink run dry on his application for membership in the Malay right-wing political party, Putra, Dr Mahathir Mohamad engaged in a racial rhetoric that reminded one of the fables of the scorpion wanting a ride across a river on the back of a frog.

“How do I know you won’t sting me after I have got you across?” queried the frog.

“Why should I be such an ingrate to someone who has done me a good turn?” replied the scorpion.

The frog got the scorpion across and was promptly stung for his kindness.

“It’s in my nature,” shrugged the scorpion.

This story is, of course, an illustration of the viciousness of some people. It is a good reminder that some things just don’t change.

For instance, some things like Mahathir’s instinct to play the race card.

It manifests itself whenever he is out of favour with Malay voters and is desperate to get back in.

One can, perhaps, understand PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang’s inclination to play the race and religion card.

It comes with the turf of his ideological domain, though many would dispute that by citing the universalism of his religion’s values as refutation.

Mahathir’s continued reliance on the race card is something of an aberration, given his education.

He was the first of our prime ministers from the sciences; his predecessors were all from the humanities.

That training presupposes a disposition to arrive at positions after evaluation of the evidence, an empirical cast of mind that’s quick to discard assumptions no longer valid or useful.

If there is something about the obsoleteness of racism, it is that the horrors of the whole of the 20th century were ample proof of the destructiveness of it as an instrument of public policy.

And yet we find Mahathir after two stints as prime minister – a lengthy first span that undermined the constitutional fundamentals of the country and a second one that afforded an opportunity for what should have been a grand rectification - still plumping for stances and policies that reek of tired, old discredited racist positions.

Furthermore, one would think that now, in his 10th decade in life, the sapience of his advancing, though not debilitating age, would equip him with its best conferment - wisdom.

Dismayingly, that’s not the case.

Dr M continues with his charade

The latest incarnation of his political persona suggests why the fable of the scorpion and the frog is so telling about unregenerate human nature.

Lest Mahathir gets away with his falsities, it pays to remind ourselves that the Malays are politically divided nowadays precisely because of his pivot, in his first spell of 22 years as prime minister, towards the concept of Malay dominance of the nation’s politics, where it had previously been Malay primacy.

The pivot was destructive of Malay and national unity - and engendered vast corruption and greed.

The country is living with the consequences of the derangement fomented by his pivot towards Malay dominance from Malay primacy.

Without batting an eyelid at the irony of his prescription, Mahathir sails unabashedly on.

The 19th-century historian of ideas, Georg Hegel, observed that the Owl of Minerva, a symbol of wisdom, flies only at dusk.

By this, he meant that wisdom comes when one is about ready to leave this life.

TERENCE NETTO is a journalist with half a century’s experience.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

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