This is an interesting extremely concise view of Dr Mahathir Mohamed and his legacy to Malaysia:

Dr Mahathir?s political persona and agenda were an odd mixture. A Malay nationalist, he was determined to repair all the disabling deformations of character, culture and society that resulted from the loss of Malay political power and sovereignty under colonial rule. He was also an economic modernizer and a technological hyper-modernist; and a socio-cultural traditionalist who deplored the consequences of cultural modernity, especially its thoroughgoing individualism. Yet in religious matters he was a decided anti-traditionalist, a principled critic of the old religious establishment with its clericalist aspirations to doctrinal monopolization, in short, a religious modernist or individualist.

To be an interesting mixture is no crime in a politician, and Dr Mahathir was certainly a multifaceted personality. But when public policy seeks to create a social order that is somehow an external counterpart or objectified realization of the leader?s eclectic tendencies and interests, a certain political incoherence may ensue. Arguably, this is what happened under the long domination of Malaysian political life by Dr Mahathir?s very personal outlook and agenda. Reconciling a backward-looking social deference and cultural conformism with the ?inner-directed? ethical individualism of the religious modernist is the new, post-Mahathirian ?Malay dilemma?. Overcoming, not simply rhetorically but in public policy and substantive social reality, the tensions in his legacy between cultural traditionalism and economic modernization is a challenge that Dr Mahathir has left to all Malaysians.

This is an excerpt of a longer article by Professor Clive Kessler.

Posted on December 17th, 2003 by jl
Filed under: My Malaysia