///…the more interesting question is why Mahathir is now trying to rewrite history to clear himself of the infamy of the Operation Lalang mass crackdown/// – YB Kit

Well it is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln this saying – “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

This is a message to all the strong men despots and dictators of the world.

The events in Tunisia and Egypt have taught that the day of reckoning and accounting will come. The world cheer the long suffering people and their democratic revolution; they jeer the strongmen who scrambled for a safe exit and exile.

As present dictators and autocrats squirm in their positions, they try reforms and compromise. It may work in Singapore – with strong economic performance prosperity and relatively clean government but it would not and didn’t work for one like Mubarak’s!

In Malaysia present authoritarian leaders also “talk” about reforms (talk only). They allow the Opposition to subsist but find ways and means to ensure the field is not level and they cannot win! They also absorb the young into civil service & GLCs and buy allegiance. That is why we have a bloated civil one. Those who don’t fit into this way of buying allegiance is given passports to emigrate. (It is the best way to get rid of educated young people who will only cause dictators headaches when they can’t find work and blame the government. For all the talk of human capital and talent corp that is why we don’t address the root problems causing the brain drain!).

As autocrats, dictators and strongmen in present power think and ponder over the strategies of how to stay in power and safe from the angry protests and people power sweeping from the Middle East – it is noted that from Middle East is important as many look there for inspiration – there is another audience of events in Tunisia & Egypt watching CNN and Al Jazeera’s reports in discomfit and anxiety : ie the EX- strongmen and authoritarian autocrats.

They are worried about the present anointees losing grip of power with back lash falling unto them in retirement if developments in Middle East catch on in their base countries. They too worry thy have to do accounting eventually for excesses when they were in power not too long ago. One of the ways is to re-write history – just in case!

///Mahathir, who is credited with elephantine memory except when for political reasons he chose to be a victim of amnesia///

We’re dealing here with octogenarian!

No matter how “elephantine” the memory Tun Mahathir is 86 years old (comparing, Lee Kuan Yew 88).

Hormone levels, reflexes, and memory neurotransmitters show slight decreases each year after we reach our middle aged years. Remember if one does not use it, one will eventually lose it (whether we’re talking of the big or small ‘brain’).

When one is so advance in age one could either forget things that happened or imagine things that happened which didn’t.

A little exaggeration here and there (constituting in context a lie) will happen when one reminisces and talks too much in old age.

Especially Mahathir – one of the things which he tries to keep himself mentally active and healthy despite his mature age – he once said in a keynote address at the fifth Malaysian Healthy Ageing Conference in Kuala Lumpur sometime in May 2010 – by deriving pleasure from “ribbing present leaders” – whether government or opposition!

Whilst others detest the lashing of his caustic tongue, he almost revels in it.

It is in part of this superiority syndrome – “I never really retired from politics, my interest in it is still there… and because we are better than others, we criticize them. That is what keeps me young,” he said.

If you take an octogenarian too seriously in what he said or imagined – something he does to try keep himself mentally alert – you just get enmeshed unnecessarily in this kind of dialectics on the national platform. To him its just part of the game.