“I see Datuk Seri Najib is bending backwards to appease the Chinese, in the process of course he has antagonised quite a lot of Malays.”

- Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad

Everything columnist P Gunasegaram wrote in both his articles about the former prime minister and does 'Harapan need Mahathir' is correct and if you believe that saving Malaysia means getting rid of the current grand Umno poobah then yes, the opposition does need Mahathir.

“Correct” in everything, other than bringing PAS back in the fold. Then again, it is somewhat correct. I know what Guna means about bringing PAS back in the fold. There is a dialectic going on within PAS that scares the hell out of the Abdul Hadi Awang/Umno wing of PAS and it is probably this element that Guna thinks is worth working with.

Hopefully the strategists in the opposition are working on this because the opposition has only ever been successful when they present a unified front against the hegemon. While Abdul Hadi Awang attempts to work his magic for his patrons in Putrajaya, he is mindful of manoeuvres from within to undermine the post-Tok Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat reality he is attempting to forge. But this is not what this article is about.

As I have argued, needing Mahathir is a Hobson's choice of the opposition’s making and while racial politics has always been a feature of opposition politics, the rhetoric coming from the de facto opposition leader is furthering the fear-mongering racial narratives that used to be only the province of Umno only.

Those dark paths to retaining power is always fraught with danger and it is naive to think that the opposition is “using” Mahathir. Nobody has ever used Mahathir and as one dejected DAP political strategist told me, referencing a line from a forgettable Nicholas Cage film ‘8MM’, “When you dance with the devil, the devil doesn’t change, the devil changes you.”

You have to give it to former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Even when he is peddling his ‘Malay’ nationalistic narrative, he manages to include the ‘domestic’ Chinese under his protection by claiming that “local businesses, largely Malaysian Chinese owned, will definitely lose out to those of the mainland Chinese.”

The operative word here is “Chinese” and even though Mahathir said, “It is this massive immigration that we object to. If the project is by Indians and a few million Indians are to come and live in Malaysia, we would also strongly object” - this probably does not include a certain Indian national who has been granted PR status and will no doubt be the loudspeaker du jour from the Umno regime to shore up ‘Malay’ support.

While Perkasa’s Ibrahim Ali is grateful that the Bandar Malaysia, or whatever is called, is flushed down the toilet at the moment, I do wonder though that if those “local largely owned Malaysian Chinese” concerns are as relieved as Perkasa? This considering the fact that business in Malaysia is an unholy brew of ‘ketuanan’ politics and Chinese plutocrat enablers...