Kim Quek has hit the nail o­n the head with his letter ' The Mahathir Legacy '. He has peeled away all the empty talk about how good Mahathir has been for Malaysia and systematically outlined all the reasons why Malaysians should breathe a sigh of relief when Dr M quits in October.

When Ronald Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter in 1980, he asked a simple, devastating question that exposed the ineffectiveness of the previous Carter administration. His question to Americans: "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"

A similar question could be asked of Malaysians: Are you better off today than in 1981 (when Mahathir took office)?

Obviously those who think handphones, tall buildings, BMWs and huge airports are the measure of a people's prosperity will say "yes". But scratch the surface glitter, and you will see a rotten core that has developed during Mahathir's years in power.

A whole generation has been denied leadership opportunities, the country continues to be governed by a party that is long past its "best-before" date, and the quality of political leadership in Umno and the rest of the ruling Barisan Nasional has been becoming more and more abysmal with each passing year.

As someone said recently, this is a country with first-rate infrastructure, but third-rate manpower, thanks to an education system that has been converted from being o­ne of the world's best at o­ne time into a tool to be used solely to keep Umno in power.

We have borrowed heavily from the future to pay for the glitter of Mahathir's present. o­ne day, the bills are going to come due in a big way.

Ironically, the o­ne good legacy of Mahathir's rule is that it is now just a matter of time before Umno (as we know it) finally fades from the scene. Even if it is not defeated at the ballot box or by some form of people power, it is going to collapse from the sheer weight of its own accumulated uselessness.

However, it is also unfair to blame Mahathir alone for the damage done to this country. When Mahathir took over, Umno was already well o­n the way to becoming a private club where the entrenched elites feathered their own beds. The start of the rot can in fact be traced back to the early 1970s when the New Economic Policy was implemented. All Mahathir did was to help the rot along in a big way.

There are those who will point to the huge economic growth that took place under Mahathir during the middle years of his tenure as proof of what he did for Malaysia.

That is a fallacy. Malaysia has always been well-off economically when compared to many other countries due to its rich natural and human resources, and Mahathir did nothing special to create the boom years. It's not like he pulled a country out of abject poverty to a position of prosperity. The conditions that led to the boom years were not of Mahathir's making.

That Malaysia is long overdue for an overhaul is not in doubt. Ironically, Mahathir's handpicked successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, may yet turn out to be the best person for the job. Pak Lah is a decent man, and has shown little signs that he may have what is needed to implement the major reforms needed for this country to break the shackles of its moribund state.

The question is, will he be allowed to? Already, the pushing and shoving has started to get to the head of the queue for the 'post-Pak Lah' era. He's going to have a hard time handling the ambitious offspring of some of his predecessors, as well as the many others who are going to start a political food fight starting in October.