Mahathir's Purge of 2020

COMMENT | Revenge is a dish best served cold and in Sunday's attempted coup, Malaysians watched Dr Mahathir Mohamad being delivered an ice-cold enema; his much anticipated but failed "Wawasan 2020" had morphed into "Mahathir's Purge of 2020", with Malaysia becoming a pariah state.

Ironically, he wants to form a unity government, but the nation is divided. He is still prime minister, but there are no ministers to govern.

For Mahathir, resigning was his cold revenge against his "frenemy" the impatient prime-minister-in-waiting, Anwar Ibrahim. Resigning freed him, from fulfilling his succession "promise", and those who can see through Anwar's charade were given temporary respite.

Who is worse? Mahathir or Anwar? Neither. They are equally bad for the country in their respective ways. Mahathir was given the mandate to clean-up the nation, and if the MPs had just focussed we could have judged their performance to evaluate them for re-election in GE15.

I viewed Sunday's event as a good episode in the history of the nation and a blessing in disguise. We can now press the reset button.

Sunday saw greedy, power-hungry, impatient and desperate politicians being stripped naked. They could not contain their blind ambition, their avarice, and more importantly, their utter contempt for the rakyat who had voted for them.

Criticisms, like tagging him "Emperor-for-life" slid off Mahathir's back like...