Former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has declared that voting the opposition was to vote for billionaire George Soros' alleged attempt to colonise Malaysia.

In an commentary which appeared in the New Sunday Times today, Mahathir had quoted several sources stating Soros had attempted to do the same to Hungary, Ukraine and Georgia in the past.

The underlying theme among those quoted by Mahathir was that Soros had funded NGOs to build up a "civil society" to pave way for "colonisation" by global capital.

"Some may remember Anwar Ibrahim's fondness for 'civil society' when he was in the government. He still talks about civil society now.

S Pakatan dinner Anwar "The similarity of ideas between the two, Soros and Anwar ( left ), is significant," wrote Mahathir.

For Mahathir, one such proxy for Soros is Malaysiakini , which he regarded as a NGO out to do his "evil" bidding, putting "his kind of people" in power.

"He (Soros) regards Malaysiakini as the NGO to manipulate in order to achieve his objective.

"There are of course other foreign NGOs and governments manipulating Malaysia's opposition for their interest.

"A vote for the opposition is a vote for Soros, the rogue currency trader," he wrote.

Why Soros was invited to KL

Mahathir's commentary was a response to Malaysiakini's articles on his correspondences with Soros, which exposed the former prime minister's hypocrisy.

According to Mahathir, the articles were an attempt to "legitimise" the receipt of funding from Soros and that the two of them had not buried the hatchet as previously reported.

"When I was away, Malaysiakini was busy trying to legitimise their receiving money from Soros because I invited him to join the campaign to make war a crime.

Last day of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Najib Abdul Razak takes over as prime minister in Putrajaya "Receiving money from Soros and an invitation to make war a crime are two different things. In no way can one justify the other," he said.

[Despite believing that Malaysiakini is controlled by Soros, Mahathir had granted several interviews this news organisation during the height of his feud with his successor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi ( right ).]

Mahathir explained that he had only corresponded with Soros after the latter admitted that the former was not wrong in criticising currency trading.

'No hatchets dug up'

He then invited Soros to join his campaign after learning that Soros was financing a campaign to prevent president George W Bush from winning a second term.

"I thought Soros' opposition to Bush was because he did not like war.

"But he replied to my invitation to work towards making war a crime by explaining that people had been fighting wars for 7,000 years and, therefore, war is a means of settling conflicts.

" Malaysiakini is quite right in surmising that his answer was in the negative. I was not surprised. Obviously, he was not against killing people in war," said Mahathir.

Mahathir said that eventually, he met Soros and the two agreed to disagree.

"He still maintained that currency trading is right and proper. We did not bury any hatchet. I was being civil as I am a Malaysian and nothing more. So digging up hatchets does not arise," he said.

Previously, Malaysiakini had repeatedly denied claims that Soros exerts any influence on its editorial policy. The organisation's only link with Soros was a grant from his Open Society Institute for one of its project.