Mahathir Mohammad made a name for himself in 1970 when he wrote “The Malay Dilemma”.
After becoming a senior Cabinet Minister for seven years and twice Prime Minister of Malaysia for altogether 24 years, Mahathir recently concluded that the Malays have lost economic and political control of Malaysia.
Are those who argued that Mahathir’s “The Malay Dilemma” has led finally to Najib Razak’s multi-billion-dollar 1MDB scandal and Malaysia becoming a kleptocratic state right in their arguments?
I invite Mahathir to also discuss “The Malaysian Dilemma” and not just focus on “The Malay Dilemma” while ignoring “The Non-Malay Dilemma” altogether.
I have said that the most important question in Malaysia today is not the rhetorical and baseless question that the Malays have lost economic and political control, but whether Malaysians, regardless of race, religion, or region, can reset and return to the original nation-building principles of our nation’s founding fathers, to reunite a very polarised plural society, and to make Malaysia again a first-rate world-class nation, with world-class political, economic, educational, and social system instead of hurtling along to become a divided, failed, and kleptocratic state on Malaysia’s Centennial in 2057.
Or in the words of Bapa Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman, for Malaysia to become a “a beacon of light in a difficult and distracted world”?
Does Mahathir agree?
It is sad to see Mahathir ending his political career as a comrade-in-arm with the PAS President, Hadi Awang.
(Media Statement by DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang in Penang on Saturday, March 4, 2023)