Tun Daim looked very frail in his wheelchair during his press conference earlier in the day. A picture paints a thousand words. Looking at his image, I reckon that whatever talk about the Mahathir-Daim powered Dubai Move or London Move, is over.
Tun Mahathir is almost 100 years old. Tun Daim appears to have aged 100 years in the last couple of months. The two Tuns might have been the greatest political duo that Malaysia ever saw during their prime, but Muhammad Ali and Maradona were the greatest in their field during their time too.
Time passes. No one can remain great forever.
At the end of the day, to be a force in politics, you have to give your word and people must believe in the worth of your word. Looking at Tun Daim and knowing Tun Mahathir’s age, I doubt if anybody is going to believe their words. The word you give today about tomorrow is only of value if it still carries weight tomorrow. If people have doubts as to whether you will be around tomorrow, your word today is meaningless, regardless of how great you were in the past, or how much people respected you once.
During his press conference, Tun Daim said : “ “I am not too bothered about my fate now. Let Anwar throw everything at me, but I fear for the fate of my country.”
As a citizen, I also share Tun Daim’s anxiety over the country's future.
Malaysia is in a crisis point.
Hippocrates, the Father of Western Medicine, defines a crisis point as a point where either an illness will triumph and the patient will succumb or the patient will triumph and the illness will abate.
Malaysia is ill. It has been ill for a long time.
Anwar’s reign is a crisis point. Either Anwar will cure Malaysia or he will end Malaysia.
While Tun Daim is certain that Anwar will bring Malaysia to an end, I believe that this is just one of the possibilities. The other possibility is that Anwar might begin the process of relieving Malaysia from its illness.
Whether we like it or not, all of us realise that something has got to give in the country. We cannot continue as we are. We all know it in our bones that it is not a good destination that we are leading to if we continue as we are.
It is either change or perish for Malaysia today. We might not be able to decide as to who amongst us should change or change more, but at the end of the day, we all realise that something has to change.
Tun Daim is saying that Anwar is not the leader that we can count on to lead us in this period of change, because he “is abusing its powers, while betraying all the promises of reform”.
““Is this the new Malaysia that was promised?” Tun Daim added, before urging Malaysians to stand up against Anwar and his regime.
Again, I agree with Tun Daim. Anwar’s reign is showing signs that he is following the same practices of the past which has and still is leading Malaysia down the road to perdition.
But then again, in Anwar’s defence, I also believe that Anwar will first have to first fight fire with fire before he stops Malaysia’s march to a bleak future.
The reason Malaysia is in a bad place today is because of the practices and culture that were cultivated and normalised during Daim and Mahathir’s reign.
I am not saying that I disagree completely with the practices and culture that were cultivated and normalised during Mahathir’s and Daim’s time, but I do think that even too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” the American philosopher Eric Hoffer observes.
Had Mahathir and Daim left the scene when the great cause to take Malaysia forward was in the stage of a movement, they would have been enshrined in our memories as the heroes of our nation.
Had they left when they had turned the movement into a business, they would have still left with a great legacy.
But because they stayed until the business had become a racket, and are still insisting that the racket is what the country must put its faith on to survive, they are likely to be forced to leave the scene as criminals.
To force them to leave and change the culture and practise that they had cultivated and normalised during their time, Anwar will likely have to turn a blind eye on reforms and use the weapons of the ancien régime to fight fire with fire.
After he has forced the chief leaders of the old order out, it is still doubtful as to whether Anwar has within him the potential to bring forth a Malaysia that is yet to be.
I have always believed that Anwar doesn’t not have in him the seed of the world to come.
To me, Anwar belongs to the past. In memories, proclivities, disposition, standpoints and aspirations, I believe that he belongs in the same world that Mahathir and Daim call home.
But just because I do not believe that Anwar will not bring about a Malaysia that is yet to be, it doesn’t mean that I don’t think that he will clear the path for a new Malaysia to come about.
A new Malaysia can only be built on the ashes of the old one. I believe that Anwar will set ablaze the old Malaysia, and prepare the grounds for a new Malaysia to be formed.
While it is likely true that under Anwar, the Malaysia as Daim and Mahathir know it will end, it is not necessarily the case that after the Malaysia as Daim and Mahathir knows it ends, Malaysia itself will come to an end.
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is the author of “While Waiting for the World to end”. He was a columnist at FMT and a frequent contributor to the South China Morning Post, Malaysia-Today, MalaysiaNow, MalaysiaKini and Focus Malaysia.
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