Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. A Perplexing Malaysian Enigma.

The heart attack suffered by Dr Mahathir this morning got me thinking and when I had lunch with a couple of friends, a multiracial tightknit group of buddies, it turned out that I wasn't the only one who had put on the thinking cap. (It's sad that these days one has even to specify that one has lunch with a multiracial group of friends while in the good old days the words 'group of friends' were explicitly understood to be multiracial.)

During the candid discussion over lunch it seemed that each of us had considered the scenario of a Malaysia without Mahathir. The Tun has been so much a part of the lives of Malaysians for nearly 25 years that it is difficult to imagine a world without him. Take the current accusations of corruption and abuse of power against government leaders and their families. Who else can expose them or berate the leadership as effectively as the 'old man?' No one and absolutely no one has the ability to arouse so much of emotion and varied reactions from the people as Dr Mahathir can. Not even the Tunku could have matched the Tun for sheer charisma and drawing power.

It was during his premiership that the Malaysian economy 'came of age' and we were firmly entrenched among the better performers in the economic field worldwide. It's said that it is human nature not to prize or appreciate something or someone until it or him/her is no more there. That may well come true in the case of Dr M when his time in this mortal world is up. The amount of hatred and hostility towards him both by those who felt betrayed and cheated by him as well as those ingrates who stood to gain and did gain handsomely during his tenure, is regrettable and even considered disgraceful. In the current spat with the government he had received a lot of flak. Yet he soldiered on, oblivious to the change in tide and his own increasingly isolated position. While he professed and claimed that he had the larger interest and welfare of the nation in mind, he was publicly reviled and castigated by long time opponents and erstwhile friends alike and was even asked to behave like a pensioner. That too by a member of the Royalty whom the Tun had stood resolutely by at a time when the Sultan was most vulnerable.

While I don't consider myself as an admirer of the Tun nor do I harbour any hatred towards him. As an individual, like others I worked hard to achieve whatever little I have without any aid from Dr Mahathir and neither was I a beneficiary of any government largesse (not that I would have minded if I had been!) Yet I, along with others in our lunch group still feel some sort of affinity with the man in a familial sort of way. He had been up there in the PM's chair for so long as the leader of the country that without many of us realizing it, he has become a father figure for the nation; the same way the Tunku was several decades ago.

This sudden news of the heart attack somehow caused alarm bells to ring and lead to the realization that he is not going to be around forever and forced me to ponder with trepidation what Malaysia will be like without him. Love him or hate him he has always been there, through thick and thin and brought us out of the worst economic crisis that we had ever faced, almost unscathed. Now the nation under the current leadership along with the extra constitutional appendage represented by Khairy Jamaluddin is poised to face the worst political crisis in our history. Wouldn't it be good and safe if the steadying hand of Dr Mahathir was there to tide us through this as well?