Quora Answer: Is Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad Jealous over Singapore’s Success?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Is Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad jealous over Singapore’s success?” 

Perhaps jealous is not the correct word.  A better term would be resentful.  If we say he were jealous, it would imply that Mahathir bin Mohamad would want to emulate Singapore’s success, and that cannot be further from the truth.  Singapore is the antithesis of Mahathir’s vision of a Malay Malaysia. 

In the “Malay Dilemma”, written 11 years before he became Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir laid out his apartheid vision of a Malaysia where political and economic power was concentrated solely in the hands of the Malays.  He claimed that the Malays, by their good nature, lost their preeminence as the natives of the land to colonial oppressors in the form of the British, and avaricious immigrants in the form of the Chinese.  He even had time to throw in anti-Jewish propaganda. 

Singapore is a multicultural, multi-ethnic secular state that promotes people based on meritocracy.  It is a Chinese majority island in the Malay Archipelago.  It is considered the closest ally to Israel, with a military that borrows a first strike doctrine from the Israelis.  The SAF was set up with help from Israel.  Singapore’s very success in the face of all its challenges, shows up the lie of a Malay-centric political system in Malaysia.  It is Exhibit A of Lee Kuan Yew’s Malaysian Malaysia that the PAP articulated in the 1964 election prior to Separation.  Singapore is proof that had we stayed a part of Malaysia, and had Malaysia chosen the path of multiculturalism, secularism and meritocracy, it could possibly have been well on the path to being a developed nation, with one of the higher standards living in the world. 

Instead, Mahathir can look from across the Causeway and gnash his teeth at this upstart nation that by its very existence, upon its principles of a united nation “regardless of race, language and religion”, shows the world how wrong he is.  The Malay Dilemma became the foundation of UMNO Baru, and all its policies, including justifying the continuation of the New Economic Plan long after Abdul Razak bin Hussein had passed on.  The Malay Dilemma articulated a vision of perpetual race domination at the expense of justice and meritocracy.  The Malay Dilemma is gave a veneer of respectability to feudal patronage, crony capitalism and institutional corruption.  How can Mahathir not hate Singapore?