COMMENT It's clear that former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, judging from his continuing defensive comments in the media on the ongoing Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on Immigrants in Sabah and issues unrelated to it, suffers from an identity crisis and perhaps thinks that he's the law. That's putting it mildly.

If not for politicisation of the issue by Sabahans, and the opposition seizing the moral high ground, the federal government would have never agreed in a million years to hold the RCI.

Mahathir will get nowhere in the emerging Malaysia by twisting and turning everything into a racial and religious issue. This is a game he played well before the age of the Internet and, as a result, went on to become prime minister.