Mahathirism rides again, with all its attendant horrors and monstrosities intact.

The latest manifestation of the full-throttled return of Mahathirism is one of the wildest accusations in Malaysian politics – that Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was the real mastermind in the “citizenship-for-votes” scams in Sabah in the nineties known as “Project M”.

When did former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad discover that Anwar was the mastermind of the project named infamously after him as “Project M”?

Clearly not on January 16, 2013 when revelations at the Sabah Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on illegal immigrants implicated two of Mahathir’s closest confidantes, former Deputy Home Minister, Megat Junid Megat Ayub and former political secretary Abdul Aziz Shamsuddin in the “Project M” scams from 1990 – 1995 to issue hundreds of thousands of fake blue identity cards and false letters of approval for birth certificates in exchange for votes to illegal immigrants.

Nor on the following day on January 17 when for the first time in two decades, Mahathir publicly admitted the existence of “Project M” but defended it as lawful on the ground that the Filipino illegal immigrants could speak Malay and “have the right to be citizens”, while casting a serious slur on the memory and good name of Tunku Abdul Rahman by alleging that Bapa Malaysia had done worse by giving citizenship to one million unqualified people before Merdeka, lamenting that no one had made it an issue.

Nor for the next two weeks until January 31 when Mahathir suddenly announced that Anwar was the real mastermind of “Project M” responsible for the “citizenship-for-votes” scam in Sabah, although admitting having no proof to back his claim. Read the rest of this entry »