Dr M at 100: Still haunted by the Malay Dilemma

As he turns 100, Malaysia's longest-serving prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has acknowledged a flaw.

- Shannon Teoh

PUTRAJAYA —

"Maybe I am not so good at communicating," he told The Straits Times on July 8, just two days shy of becoming a centenarian.

Cue chuckles. After all, this is a man whose political prowess had propelled him to a two-thirds parliamentary supermajority in five general elections, with Malaysians handing him the country's reins for 24 years, from 1981 to 2003, and from 2018 to 2020.

But his rather flippant response — I was asking what he has achieved since he became an adviser to the four states ruled by his former nemesis Parti Islam SeMalaysia in 2023 — masks a much harder issue that has haunted Tun Dr Mahathir his entire life.

He took Malaysia to unprecedented heights of developmental success, but just could not lick the one problem he wanted to tackle: Getting its Malays to change what he called a culture of "lassitude" and to diminish the economic disparity between them and other communities.

It was not for want of trying: He expanded bumiputera policies meant to level them up but which critics say continue to entrench the Malay Dilemma — whether or not Malays should accept government aid to uplift themselves — he wrote about 55 years ago.

"This is our culture. We do not know what hardship is. We only want things to be easy. I have failed to achieve the most important thing — how to change the Malays," Dr Mahathir had said in 2002.

In the interview with ST to mark his 100th birthday, when invited to introspect, he mused on his regrets and failings.

Perhaps people "do not see the possibilities" in his suggestions. Perhaps he picked the wrong people to succeed him. He picked the wrong time to step down.

Fleetingly, once, he allowed that perhaps his policies were flawed.

It is hard not to see a nationalist who desperately wants to see Malaysia succeed.