The _Machiavellian Corrupting Contemptible destroyer of a dynamic progressive harmonious Malaysia_, *Dr Mahathir* - _very well analysed indeed by_ *Dr Betty Teh* _of Alor Setar, Kedah_ (a KLumpur *Specialist Doctor Consultant*) ..... 🙃😤🤢🤮😡👎🏿 ..... _(ChaiHB)_ ..... 👇
# *"THE DISEASE MAHATHIR LEFT Behind"* _(By Betty Teh)_
At a hundred, Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad still insists on speaking as though Malaysia owes him a hearing. She does not. The nation he once led has spent two decades cleaning up the debris of his legacy, and the least he could offer now is silence dignified, if not contrite.
Yes, his 22 year rule is often called Malaysia’s golden era. *But the glitter masked corrosion. Beneath the skyscrapers and slogans, Mahathir planted the idea that political power could be sustained through patronage that corruption was not deviance but method.* From that seed grew an entire *culture of entitlement, where loyalty could be bought and moral authority sold.* What began as pragmatism became pathology.
Under his leadership, *corruption ceased to be moral failure; it became a function of governance.*
*Money politics did not merely creep into our system; it was institutionalised under his watch. Cash handouts, contracts, concessions all became the currency of loyalty.* Every prime minister since has inherited that machinery, tweaking the gears but never dismantling them. The “strongman model” Mahathir perfected made institutions ornamental and citizens dependent. It was efficient, it was effective, and it was ruinous.
This was the quiet revolution that reshaped Malaysia’s political DNA.
Even his supposed redemption arc his return to power in 2018 ended in the same old betrayal. The Sheraton Move was not a political misstep; it was treachery. It shattered the public’s brief hope for reform and plunged the country back into the transactional politics he himself engineered. That act alone erased whatever goodwill remained from his first reign.
The fall of UMNO, once unthinkable, was not the work of his successors but of his design. He built a party too centred on himself, too addicted to the spoils of rule, too hollow to survive without its patron. When he turned against it, it collapsed like a structure eaten through by termites slowly, predictably, from within.
We can, however, be grateful for one small mercy: his sons’ political ambitions never took root. Despite every effort to position them as heirs to his influence, the public never embraced them. It is ironic perhaps even poetic that a man of such charisma, married to a woman admired for her dignity, raised children who inherited neither. *Entitlement, after all, is not a trait that inspires loyalty. Failed DNA.*
It is time to say this plainly: Mahathir’s legacy is not one of progress but of paralysis. *His policies built a generation of citizens dependent on state favour, and a generation of politicians who mistake manipulation for leadership.* The myth of Mahathir’s indispensability must end; Malaysia has paid enough for it.
He could still choose silence not out of bitterness, but as an act of mercy. To let the nation breathe without his commentary would be the first truly selfless act of his political life. The Malaysia he left behind is not a legacy. It is a disease. And the cure begins when he stops speaking.
*Dignity, unlike power, cannot be bought.*
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