Mahathir Mohamed, Malaysia’s online dissident

Malaysia’s former premier Mahathir Mohamed’s disdain for the press, particularly the western media, is legendary. He despised Malaysian journalists who worked for the British, Australian and American press, publicly calling them “pet poodles of their colonial masters” because they often gave him a bad press. But the 82-year-old octogenarian, who brooked no dissent during his 22-year-reign as Malaysia’s longest serving premier, has become an online dissident of sort — enlisting Malaysian bloggers and online news websites to help him in his campaign to oust Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, 67, his hand-picked successor, from office.

Malaysia’s ‘fair, fair, fair Abdullah’

I don’t know if I should fault The Star’s English of its front-page story today or to try to understand what the Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi means when he assured Malaysians at the 54^th General Assembly of the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) yesterday that “his policies” will be “fair and equitable” to them. Doesn’t fair mean equitable? Anyway, is Abdullah saying that he’s abandoning all racially discriminatory policies such as the National Economic Policy (NEP)? The NEP isn’t really fair to the Malays because it aims to give only 30% of the nation’s economy to them and the other indigenous people, collectively known as Bumiputra or sons of the soil, who make up slightly more than half of Malaysia’s 25 million people who include ethnic Chinese and Indians. But, of course, the NEP isn’t HIS policy. Or is it?