“There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”

— George W Bush

COMMENT | When then Pakatan Rakyat managed to deliver a body blow to the Umno regime in the 13th general election, former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad spewed out propaganda demonising the Chinese community, the DAP and Malays who voted for the coalition.

He claimed - "But Kit Siang (DAP advisor Lim Kit Siang) came and brought his 'Malaysian Malaysia' concept aimed at creating Chinese hatred towards the Malays; that they (the Malays) purportedly gained everything after independence." - which is cute as far as propaganda goes.

But more importantly of the Malay community, it was further reported that - “Dr Mahathir noted that the Malay community was getting weaker and more divided due to the attitude of some Malays who were hungry for power and positions to the extent of forgetting the community's basic struggle for its race, religion and country. 'They want to gain power in whatever way. Even if they have to sell their own race to get what they want, they will do it,' he said.”

In the 2008 election, when former prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (below) suffered the kind of electoral loss unheard of during the long Umno watch, the old maverick thundered during a ceramah, "Anyone else would have already resigned but (Abdullah) has no shame." If Abdullah had no shame about not resigning, what of Mahathir, whose resignation was the nail in the coffin of the Harapan collapse...