Malaysia goes into its 14th general election this year, with Prime Minister Najib Razak facing his mentor, Dr Mahathir Mohamad. For Jahabar Sadiq, it would be his seventh election coverage across the country.

TWENTY years ago, a similar scene played out in Kuala Lumpur. A number of street stalls selling T-shirts, political paraphernalia, ox-tail soup and burgers, as politicians raged inside a hall or the house of a supporter.

Hundreds of supporters and those curious would mill about, cocking their ears to listen to speeches peppered with Quranic verses, invocations and vows for a better Malaysia.

Twenty years ago, It was Anwar Ibrahim – sacked deputy prime minister and one-time heir apparent to then prime minister Dr Mahathir, dubbed “Mahafiraun”, the dictator of Malaysia.

Last weekend, it was Dr Mahathir himself. The man who ruled Malaysia for 22 years was on the stump, walking the path of Anwar to unseat the sitting prime minister, and the ruling party and coalition.

The same party and coalition that Dr Mahathir had led once before, but now cast as a corrupt and thieving movement that must be cast out of power in GE14, due by August.

“It is up to the people to oust this big thief,” he said calmly in the Kuala Lumpur suburb of Setiawangsa, thief being his favourite word for his one-time political protege Najib, the country’s sixth prime minister.

Dr Mahathir is 92 and fit as a fiddle, something he says he owes to having good genes from his parents. Just like his days in power, he criss-crosses the country, repeating his diatribe against Najib.

But, there was a brief lapse of memory by the life-long Umno man, who registered Umno Baru in 1988 after the original party was declared illegal.

He was railing against “thieves” when he said: “They steal and do everything, but they will still get you to support Pak… Umno and Barisan Nasional.”

In that moment, he was close to saying Pakatan Harapan – the coalition he now leads against Najib.

PH comprises his own party, Bersatu, and former political foes DAP and Anwar’s PKR, together with Amanah, a splinter of Islamist party PAS, which remains on the opposition bench, but is close to Umno and estranged from other opposition parties.

The Setiawangsa parliamentary seat itself is rather new, carved out of the Wangsa Maju parliamentary seat for the 2004 polls to increase the number of seats for BN to win in the aftermath of the 1999 general election results, which were dented by Anwar’s sacking in 1998.

Incidentally, Setiawangsa, which has been won all three times by BN, was created after Dr Mahathir resigned in 2003. This was his first visit, and an occasion to launch his party’s division there.

His party wants the seat, which was first contested by PAS in 2004 and, later, PKR in subsequent elections after the historic electoral pact of straight fights in the 2008 general election that saw BN losing its parliamentary super-majority and, later, its popular vote in 2013.

Like many other seats eyed by Dr Mahathir’s Bersatu, Setiawangsa is a Malay-majority seat that was once just a clutch of villages, with residents working in nearby factories or the sprawling Defence Ministry buildings in the Jalan Semarak area.

Today, there are swanky condominiums, upmarket housing estates, bigger brick houses, student dormitories and malls in the area as a number of government flats are flattened by developers’ wrecking ball. The light rail transit track cuts through the area alongside a tolled highway.

Prosperity is in the air, thanks to the Mahathir years of higher economic growth, with a torrent of privatisation and infrastructure projects that yielded pink forms and unit trusts for Malays.

That bounty helped develop the area and keep the electorate there loyal to Umno and BN.

But, the number of elderly and middle-aged men and women among the crowd listening to Dr Mahathir tells a different story. The years of prosperity might have benefited them, but these past few years have not been that fortunate.

They complain that their children are still staying at home, unable to get good jobs, and that there are more taxes to pay these days compared with the Mahathir years.

“You know, in Dr Mahathir’s time, we got pink forms or unit trusts, which we had to pay ourselves, but the gains were there. Now, the government has to give cash to the poor.

“That tells you how the economy is suffering. They are taking money from us, and giving a bit to the poor,” said a goateed man, who called himself “Pak Ali” and wore a red T-shirt emblazoned with Dr Mahathir’s face.

Has he always supported Dr Mahathir?

Yes, always, Wahab said, not Anwar, even in the heyday of “reformasi”.

“I never had to come out to show my support, just vote BN, but today, I come out because we need change.”

Twenty years ago, that would be a quote from Anwar’s supporters – the young and those angry with the establishment over the treatment meted out to the former deputy prime minister.

These days, Anwar’s supporters are joined by Dr Mahathir’s supporters – crowding political ceramah, buying the T-shirts, waving the flags and seeking to return these two men to power, and to the better times before the 1998 rupture that broke that partnership.

Can they succeed? Perhaps.

BN MP Ahmad Fauzi Zahari scraped through with only a 1,390-vote majority in the 2013 polls, down from former MP Zulhasnan Rafique’s 8,134-vote majority in 2008 and 19,669-vote majority in 2004.

Dr Mahathir knows these numbers, and so do his supporters. Expect him to visit more of these Malay-majority seats and repeat his message: that voters help him unseat a thief to get back the prosperity from his days in power. – January 16, 2018.