So who are his business cronies? KL, 24 July: Someone sent me Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman's piece Tun Mahathir, Bapa Sebenar Pengangkutan Awam [I've retitled it Syed Saddiq: Why Mahathir had to give it to his cronies]. So I went through the article by the youth leader of Mahathir's new party. It was a piece written in defence of the former prime minister. Well, I suppose, after all the praises for Najib Razak over the much-awaited MRT project, Mahathir needed defending. But someone else could have done a better job. I cringed when Syed Saddiq admitted, unwittingly or no, that Mahathir did award major transport projects to this cronies. As if that was not bad enough, he went to explain why that was necessary (perlu) and encouraged (harus) at the time ...
And there we were telling the Americans, the IMF and fellow Malaysians that all those allegations about Mahathir corruption, cronyism and nepotism (with apologies to Zahid Hamidi, who went to jail for making those allegations against Mahathir publicly) were lies ...
"Alaa, cronyism under Najib is as bad if not worse," a staunch Mahathir supporter told me.
Really? Then please give me the name of one Malaysian individual who deserves or qualifies to be called a crony of Najib Razak. There were countless when Mahathir was PM, as Syed Saddiq is telling you, even if we were to accept the words of the likes of Francis Yeoh and Samsuddin Abu Hassan that they were actually not cronies of Mahathir's, or the Government's but had made fortunes based on their own blood, sweat and tears blah blah blah ...