COMMENT | This year 2020 was to be a “coming out” celebration of sorts for Malaysia, akin to South Korea’s glittering 1988 Olympics Game that heralded the nation’s entry into the developed world. 

Had everything gone right for Malaysia during the past three or four decades, this year would have been the realisation of her Vision 2020 aspiration of also joining that exclusive club.

Alas, that was not to be. Malaysia did not get to celebrate her Vision 2020; instead, she had to endure "Delusion 2020". The country is now fast slipping irreversibly into the ranks of failed states and chronic third world status a la Haiti and Zimbabwe, with political instability and entrenched corruption the sorry reality.

Malaysia tops the world where companies feel that they have lost business because of their competitors’ bribery. Meanwhile, former premier Najib Abdul Razak’s 1MDB scandal remains the top worldwide.

That reference to South Korea is ironic as well as painful. Back in 1966, then South Korea president Park Chung-hee visited Malaysia to study her rural development scheme. Oh, how the trajectories of the two nations have shifted!

There are three grand Malaysian 2020 delusions. One is not really a delusion but the very real and devastating Covid-19 pandemic that is raging out of control. I am confident that modern science will handle that, despite the preoccupation of medieval-minded Malaysian ulama trivialising the halal issue with respect to the forthcoming vaccine. 

They forgot that Malaysia’s first and major super-spreader event was the Tabligi Jamaat gathering back in February. That mass ostentatious display of piety breached the very tenet of our faith – to first protect human lives. The vaccine would do that, and thus halal.

As for the other two, first is the still unpunctured delusion of a nonagenarian who fancies himself as God's greatest gift to Malays and Malaysia. Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad deludes himself that he could achieve in his remaining ageing few years what he could not for nearly 23 years in power earlier, and when he was much younger. 

Second is the equally bizarre fantasy of a sixty-something Najib, convicted of criminally looting 1MDB on an unprecedented scale, parading himself as the nation’s saviour.

There is no cure in sight, scientific or otherwise, for those two delusions. The problem goes far beyond the two flawed personalities to the very essence of Maruah Melayu (Malay dignity). 

A large number of Malays adulate Najib as their "bossku" (my boss), while Mahathir is still viewed as a grand saviour despite the mess he has created and continues to wreak. Malaysia not achieving Vision 2020 is only one sorry example.

Consider the overtly racist Malay Dignity Congress of October 2019, launched by Mahathir. The attendees were not simple villagers. They were highly educated and seemingly sophisticated Malays, with the event organised by leaders of universities!

Even if Najib and Mahathir were gone, the pair currently running the country are no sparkles either.

As for the character positioning himself as the government's Number Two, he could not even manage his family’s finances. 

Senior Minister Azmin Ali has allegedly stiffed a small bumiputra travel agency with his humungous vacation bills. There’s more. The politician is Malaysia’s economic czar.  

As a needless reminder, Mahathir was instrumental in Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s as well as Azmin’s ascent, just as he was with former premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib. Malaysia wasted a decade and a half with that second pair.

The greatest endorsement for PKR president Anwar Ibrahim as a leader is precisely this: Mahathir is dead set against him. Anwar is the antithesis of Mahathir’s ideal of an effective leader. 

If Mahathir has any sense of self-introspection, he would have realised by now that all his previous picks had been duds. He has zero talent in identifying potential leaders. Malaysians should have also by now recognised this destructive deficiency in the man.

Far from being the Energizer Bunny that “keeps going and going and going,” Mahathir’s continued political presence is more the stink of a skunk that just would not go away.

To add to Anwar’s credibility, his PKR party has been the most successful, DAP excepted, in inspiring talented young Malaysians to enter politics.

Mahathir’s obsession with denying Anwar is not to save Malaysia as he often expressed, but to save his hide and kin. Mahathir knows that if Anwar were to assume power, with his commitment to transparency and honest government, he would investigate all past shenanigans. 

Mahathir’s stand reveals more on him. His visible anguish is a telling contrast to Anwar’s confident equanimity.

Malaysians must shatter these 2020 delusions by ridding the nation of this poisonous political virus that began with Mahathir and is now showing up in all its ugliness and virulence with the latest leaders. 

Let Anwar and his fresh young talents take over. Save Malaysia from becoming another Zimbabwe.

M BAKRI MUSA is a Malaysian-born and Canadian-trained surgeon in private practice in Silicon Valley, California. He writes at bakrimusa.blogspot.com

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.