LETTER | This is a response to the letter published on July 6 titled “Most Chinese voters quietly yearn for stability, vision of Dr M's earlier govt” by Tan Peng Beng.

There is something seriously wrong with this guy. Actually, there’s a whole army of these fossils wandering around Malaysia, still mentally living in the glory days of the 1980s and 1990s like it’s some golden utopia.

They wake up every morning, check the news, and immediately start sighing: “Ahhh… back when Dr Mahathir Mohamad was in charge… those were the days!”

A disturbingly large number of them also think the Najib Abdul Razak era was wonderful, and he was some economic wizard.

Brother, please.

These people are not “wise elders” - they’re just lost, greedy, and suffering from severe selective memory syndrome.

They do not understand what is happening now because they did very well economically during the Mahathir or Najib era. That’s it. Nothing deeper. Pure self-interest wrapped in nostalgia.

And don’t even get me started on Daim Zainuddin. Some of them speak about that man like he was Malaysia’s financial genius. More like the Grim Reaper for small Chinese businesses. Let me drop some cold, hard reality on these rose-tinted clowns.

Dr M’s sins

Mahathir took a flamethrower to racial unity. He didn’t just play the race card; he made it the entire deck.

He institutionalised ethnic division, turned it into official government policy, and then acted shocked when everyone started hating each other.

Mahathir didn’t build a united Malaysia; he built a pressure cooker with racial labels on it.

He tried to ride the political Islam wave and got absolutely bucked off. Now, PAS is running around as the biggest party in Parliament. Congratulations, you created the monster that’s eating your own legacy.

Money politics? Mahathir didn’t just allow it; he supercharged it into an Olympic sport when he faced the Umno challenge in 1987.

Cash, contracts, connections - everything had a price tag. Politics became less about serving the rakyat and more about who could fill their pockets fastest. This is what is happening today, and everybody knows it.

And Daim? Oh, that beautiful bank merger disaster. The original plan was to force all domestic banks, finance companies, and merchant banks (around 71 institutions in total) into just six big “anchor banks”.

Before him, there were plenty of small, regional banks that actually knew their customers - the neighbourhood Chinese uncle running a hardware shop, the auntie with her little restaurant. They understood the community.

After Daim’s brilliant “anchor bank” masterplan, those banks became giant, soulless corporations that would not lend to you unless your grandfather was a datuk and you had three properties as collateral.

Cronies thrived, people suffered

Meanwhile, the chosen few - the cronies close to Mahathir and Daim - were getting blank cheques and billion-ringgit loans to build empires.

These tycoons weren’t satisfied with a slice of the pie. They wanted the public utilities and state-owned enterprises. That’s why we called it “privatisation” during the Mahathir era?

Nah! We called it “piratisation”. Straight-up pirates in suits raiding every state-owned enterprise, every public utility, every juicy government contract they could get their greedy hands on.

So, the next time some people start telling you “Chinese businesses loved the Mahathir era”, maybe drag him to speak with the thousands of small Chinese SMEs that got crushed, suffocated, and bankrupted by those policies.

Talk to the ones who couldn’t get loans anymore. The ones who watched their competitors with political connections grow into monsters while they slowly died.

And human rights? Don’t get me started. Mahathir didn’t just bend the rules; he snapped the Federal Constitution in half, laughed, and said “Ops Lalang? What Ops Lalang?” while journalists, activists and others bore the brunt of it.

These uncles aren’t “realists”. They are just addicts chasing the high of the good old days when they were the ones getting rich, while everyone else was getting screwed.

Wake up. The past was not golden. It was gilded, and underneath all that shiny paint was pure rot.

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