Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Where is Mahathir's moral authority?

While speaking in Kota Bahru last Friday, Tun Mahathir again hit at Abdullah, his family and his advisors, as reported by Malaysiakini today.
No one would say Mahathir did not do the right things by raising those issues. However, if one looked closely, it would be discovered that those were some of the issues raised against Mahathir himself during his tenure as Prime Minister for as long as 22 years.
What did mahthir do when the similar accusations were hurled against him? He did not do anything special to address those issues.
In short, although those issues were of public interest and required Abdullah's response, Mahathir had lost the moral authority to raise them and claimed hero for so doing.
Mahathir said there was freedom of press during his time as Prime Minister but he had forgotten that the Printing and Publication Act has been hanging over the heads of the press every days all these years. What is the difference?
He accused Abdullah's son for his involvement in business. This sound familiar when his son was similarly accused of not too long ago.
Mahathir has not, until today, suggested a revamp in the system to which he was once part of it. The present poor governance is a continuation of a system tightly controlled by him for 22 years. Unless Mahathir is prepared to admit that, he cannot be percieved as being honest and genuine in his criticism.
(Photograph by courtesy of Malaysiakini)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

YB, i agree with wat u said here.
For all the many bad things that he had done , i wonder why some of the so called fight for justice blogers still give publicity for him to criticise ABB even so of the matters may not be true . I refer one that start with S - seems like he is the
da shou for M .
If ABB start to take action to those creating false story and slander, i think we should not blame him also - because they ask for it.