15 May: What P. Gunasegaram writes, Dr Mahathir Mohamad usually reads. Or, at least that's what I've gather. The seasoned journalist once wrote about Proton, at a time when the national car was not supposed to be criticised. Dr M, or his office, wasn't too happy and that changed the course of Mr Gunasegaran's career. Fast forward two and a half decades or so, Guna writes about Dr M himself, at time when the PM is not supposed to be criticised:
Mahathir did not win this election by himself. In fact, if others need reminding – surely Mahathir doesn’t and is fully aware of that – his own party Bersatu won only 13 seats out of the 52 it contested – the largest number of seats in the peninsula contested by any party in the Harapan coalition. At 25%, that’s the worst win rate of all the parties in the coalition ...
Read the whole Malaysiakini article We did not win this election to allow Mahathirism to come back in different forms.
But who, actually, are "we"? Anwar Ibrahim, Lim Kit Siang, and the others in Pakatan Harapan (or earlier Pakatan Rakyat, Barisan Alternatif, etc) had done everything to win previous general elections and failed. This time they had Dr Mahathir and they won. Without Dr Mahathir, they would have failed again. The best result the Opposition had was in 2008 and even that was with a little help from the Old Man, who was waging war against his successor. So, Mahathir can easily turn around and tell Gunasegaran, "I won the election" and that would be that. If he wants to, he might even still alter the course of Guna's career again.
