THE year 2020 was to have been a “coming out” celebration of sorts for Malaysia, akin to South Korea’s glittering 1988 Olympics Game that heralded the nation’s entry into the developed world. Had everything gone right for Malaysia during the past three or four decades, this year would have been the realisation of her Vision 2020 aspiration of also joining that exclusive club.

Alas that was not to be. Malaysia did not get to celebrate her Vision 2020; instead she had to endure Delusion 2020. The country is now fast slipping irreversibly into the ranks of failed states and chronic third world status a la Haiti and Zimbabwe, with political instability and entrenched corruption the sorry reality.

Malaysia tops the world’s places where companies feel that they have lost business because of their competitors’ bribery. Meanwhile Najib’s 1MDB heist remains the top worldwide.

That reference to South Korea is both ironic as well as painful. Back in 1966 South Korea’s Gen Park visited Malaysia to study her rural development scheme. Oh, how the trajectories of the two nations have shifted!

There are three grand Malaysian 2020 delusions. One is not really a delusion but the very real and devastating Covid-19 pandemic that is raging out of control. I am confident that modern science will handle that, despite the preoccupation of medieval-minded Malaysian ulama trivialising the halal issue with respect to the forthcoming vaccine. They forgot that Malaysia’s first and major super-spreader event was the Tabligh Jamaat gathering back in February 2020. That mass ostentatious display of piety breached the very tenet of our faith – to first protect human lives. The vaccine would do that, and is thus halal.

 As for the other two, first is the still unpunctured delusion of a nonagenarian who fancies himself as Allah’s greatest gift to Malays and Malaysia. Dr Mahathir Mohamad deludes himself that he could achieve in his few remaining years what he could not in nearly 23 years of power during his first stint in office and when he was much younger. Second is the equally bizarre fantasy of a 60-something Najib, convicted of criminally looting a government-linked company (1MDB) on an unprecedented scale, parading himself as the nation’s saviour.

There is no cure in sight, scientific or otherwise, for those two delusions. The problem goes far beyond the two flawed personalities to the very essence of “maruah Melayu” (Malay dignity). Large number of Malays adulate Najib as their bossku (my boss), while Mahathir is still viewed as a grand saviour despite the mess he has created and continues to wreak. Malaysia not achieving Vision 2020 is only one sorry example.

Consider the overtly racist Malay Dignity Congress of October 2019, launched by Dr Mahathir. The attendees were not simple villagers. They were highly educated and seemingly sophisticated Malays – the event was organised by leaders of universities!

Even if Najib and Dr Mahathir were gone, the pair currently running the country are no sparkles either. The ailing Muhyiddin, like Najib, has the same corrupt political tutelage from and the blighted political genes of Dr Mahathir. Najib and Muhyiddin are not aberrations but the predictable and inevitable outcome of Mahathirism.

As for that “semburit” character positioning himself as Number Two, he could not even manage his family’s finances. Mohamed Azmin Ali stiffed a small Bumiputra travel agency with his humungous vacation bills. There’s more. This third-rate politician is Malaysia’s economic czar! So far his talent has been in backroom and other back manoeuvres.

As a needless reminder, Dr Mahathir was instrumental in Muhyiddin’s as well as Azmin’s ascent, just as he was with Abdullah and Najib. Malaysia wasted a decade and a half with that second pair.

The greatest endorsement for Anwar Ibrahim as leader is precisely this:  Dr Mahathir is dead set against him. Anwar is the antithesis of Mahathir’s ideal of an effective leader. If the old man has any sense of self-introspection, he would have by now realised that all his previous picks had been duds. He has zero talent in identifying potential leaders. Malaysians should by now recognise this destructive deficiency in the man.

Far from being the Energizer Bunny that “keeps going and going and going,” Dr Mahathir’s continued political presence is more the stink of a skunk that just would not go away.

To add to Anwar’s credibility, his PKR party has been the most successful, DAP excepted, in inspiring talented young Malaysians to enter politics.

Dr Mahathir’s morbid obsession with denying Anwar is not to save Malaysia as he (Dr Mahathir) often expressed, but to save his hide and kin. Dr Mahathir knows that if Anwar Ibrahim were to assume power, with his commitment to transparency and honest government, he would investigate all past shenanigans. You can bet that Mahathir’s many hideous warts (London Tin, Perwaja Steel, forex debacle – the list is long) would be exposed and with those, his hollow sanctimonious condemnations of Najib’s plundering. Therein lies Dr Mahathir’s pathological preoccupation with denying Anwar’s ascent.

Dr Mahathir’s stand is telling. Dr Mahathir’s visible anguish is a telling contrast to Anwar’s confident equanimity.

Short of the actuarial tables doing Malaysia a favour, Malaysians must shatter these 2020 delusions by ridding the nation of this poisonous political virus that began with Dr Mahathir and is now showing up in all its ugliness and virulence in Muhyiddin and Azmin. Let Anwar and his fresh young talents take over. Save Malaysia from becoming another Zimbabwe. – December 7, 2020.

* M. Bakri Musa is the author of www.bakrimusa.blogspot.com.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.