COMMENT Dr Mahathir Mohamad began his road show in Penang last Thursday in a style that fused the roles he has played since the start of his political career in 1946 - as exponent of a worldview, catalyst of new ideas, and a subversive of the political status quo.

A full house of students, faculty and members of the public waited for him at Dewan Tuanku Syed Putra, the convocation hall of Universiti Sains Malaysia whose architectural design is a blend of modernist and Malay forms.

The combination made it apposite for Mahathir’s opinions which were a mix of the modern and the homely.

But first, Mahathir ( right ) was running late.

It was 40 minutes past the advertised start time of 9am and an expectant crowd knew only that the invited speaker’s arrival was certain though not imminent.

The ‘Sesi Bual Bicara’ (talk-cum-discussion session) was titled ‘Cakna Ilmu’ (on this more later) and subtitled ‘Mendepani Pemikiran Tun Dr M’ (Contemplating Dr Mahathir, The Thinker).

It soon became clear that the expansive crowd owed its size to its anticipation of risqué opinion on current affairs; they had come to hear what he had to say about Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, the target of sustained attacks from the former premier for weeks now.  

The delayed start allowed space for discreet probing.

Rosman, an amiable burly young man, waited in the ample foyer like others for Mahathir’s arrival. When asked if he knew the meaning of ‘Cakna Ilmu’, he said he did not.

“It’s a new word,” he parried, in a tone that suggested the word’s meaning did not matter as people were there not for the academic significance of the event so much as its anticipated political content.

Rosman was joined by a friend, Alif, an eager-faced non-student. It was obvious he was there because of his admiration for Mahathir.

Asked the reason for the high regard, he simply said, “He has vision - he built the bridge,” a reference to the first Penang Bridge, built under the former PM in 1985.

When it was pointed out that Mahathir had built the country up physically but had damaged it morally, Alif was unfazed, maintaining that while his Islamic faith would entail concern for morality, nevertheless he felt that Mahathir was admirable.

“He has charisma,” offered Alif.

That charisma was evident as the cavalcade of cars bearing the former premier arrived at 10.15.

Sections of the crowd that had gathered in the foyer now sought to line-up on either side of Mahathir’s pathway leading to the entrance to the Dewan, eager to shake hands.

The less ambitious were content to draw close to Mahathir’s path before raising their smartphones high to record his triumphal procession.

Once the crowd was in the hall, either seated or standing, decompression from the high anticipation of the waiting was swift.

With the place jam-packed and people craning in the aisles and vestibules and what more with the delayed start, it was obvious that the best thing would be for the programme to get going quickly.  

Someone forgot to tell the academic who delivered the speech of welcome that the crowd was there to hear Mahathir, for he went on for a quite a bit, mostly in apple-polishing vein.

Between expectations and reality

By the time the student leader who had the role of framing the leading questions started, there was a premonitory twinge on the approaching disharmony between the crowd’s expectations and the reality of what Mahathir actually said.     

The very first question drew the mismatch into sharp relief: Mahathir was asked to comment on how his unique political career must have had an extraordinary start.

He demurred, saying those beginnings weren’t exceptional; it was prosaic rather, but before he said this, he allowed - to a titer of laughter from the crowd - that he did not know the meaning of the word ‘Cakna’.

This was the key to the iconoclasm of the man; he would much rather retool old ways to be new than seek new ways to be so and wind up being gauche.

He did not say anything about Najib as the crowd had expected; he said he studied to become a doctor because he received a scholarship to do medicine; he would just as well have studied law if he had received a scholarship to read law, more so because he was keener on debate than on anything else; he wanted to be socially prominent because nobody was listening to his fulminations against the Malayan Union which was the big issue in 1946 when he set out to be politically active; through becoming a doctor he knew could be socially prominent and politically influential and that was his primary motivation.

He began to question the sociopolitical realities around him in Alor Star in 1946 because of the interface between what was in him and what his social environment was telling him.

He found that his origins in the lower middle income group meant he had to cope with many deficiencies inherent to that category. He had to get out of it; the practice of medicine was the escape hatch.

He said mercantile life in the small town of 20,000 people that was Alor Star in the 1940 s was dominated by Chinese traders and a sprinkling of Indian Muslim ones. The Malays were all farmers, fishermen or government clerks and content with being that because they were not people who were mercantile.

Whenever Mahathir encountered anything that puzzled or challenged him, he would read the literature on it and then canvass opinion from advisers and consultants before arriving at what he felt was the core of the problem and devise a solution.

Barely halfway through this spiel, several attendees who were standing in the aisles began to file out of the Dewan; this was not what they had come to hear.

One feels they would have done the same even if the ‘Cakna Ilmu’ title of the event had instead been ‘Menimba Ilmu’, which would have been the more appropriate title, given what was being propounded by the invited speaker.

Young and not-so-young Malaysians are more curious about the controversial, especially if it is spiked with scandal, than they are about the autobiographical, even when it is by someone whom they think worthy of admiration.

Suffice it is to say, if the contest between Mahathir and Najib is at a stalemate, the man on the cusp of his tenth decade in life will devise new ways to challenge and provoke.

Wolfgang Goethe was right: salvation is for those who never cease to strive.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.