About 20 years ago, I took more than 20 graduating students from Nanyang Technological University to Xi’an for a field study trip. Before coming back, we visited the Qianling Tomb where the Tang Dynasty emperor, Gaozong and the empress Wu Zetian were buried.

On the eastern side of the mausoleum where Empress Wu was buried, there is a tablet without characters.

Empress Wu did not write her merits and achievements on the monument, but left it blank. She was apparently prepared to allow future generations to comment freely on her deeds, whether right or wrong.

Throughout the world, most politicians who wrote autobiography are different from Empress Wu. Many of them either made lies, justified their own negligence or ignorance, counterattacked the enemy who attacked them, or took the opportunity to praise their achievements and contributions to the country and society.

Those who have the courage to publicly admit their mistakes and are willing to acknowledge that the government’s corrupt practices and incompetence, injustice, waste of public resources and other unjust measures that have occurred in society in the past are the faults caused by their own policies, are extremely rare.

Former Prime Minister Mahathir has just published a new book titled “Capturing Hope: The Struggle Continues for a New Malaysia“.

The content of the book describes his experience as prime minister for the second time in 2018 and the challenges faced by the Pakatan Harapan government until its fall 22 months later.

From his standpoint of self defense, Mahathir said that when he was prime minister, he focused on reorganizing the unprofessional and self-profiting administration team left behind by Najib’s previous government.

Mahathir naturally did not mention that Najib’s team’s vices were actually derived from him when he served as prime minister earlier for 22 years from 1981 to 2004. Mahathir might have promised verbally that he wanted to rectify the evil practices, but we trust this would lead to nowhere as he will not give up Malay-led racial and crony politics.

Mahathir mentioned that during the 14th National General Election in 2018, a large number of senior civil servants openly supported Umno and did not support his Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia. Is it fair to say that a large number of civil servants supporting the Umno leader Najib who was hostile to Mahathir was wrong, whereas supporting him while he was Prime Minister and Chairman of Umno was right?

The double standard of allegiance set by Mahathir is really puzzling! It should be noted that in the past 50 years, under the umbrella of Umno’s racial policy, many senior Malaysian civil servants have obtained various benefits and have formed an unbreakable interest group. Consequently, whosoever wants to continue to support the vested interests of such group, they will support him or her!

Mahathir also noticed that the 1.6 million civil servants across the country are too bloated. As a result, too many employees do not contribute towards higher efficiency but the opposite is true due to mutual prevaricating behavior.

Naturally, we all know that the instigator is Mahathir himself, but he has never dared to touch this sensitive issue, let alone a thorough reform. As for the main reason for the collapse of Pakatan Harapan within 22 months of a coalition government, I don’t think Mahathir’s book has told the truth!

On December 12, 2021, Mahathir released his new book and accepted an interview with the media, and said quite a few disappointing views. First disappointment is his superficial understanding of the Chinese community.

For example, the Chinese language teaching in Malaya’s Chinese schools switched from dialects to Mandarin Chinese teaching, which began after the May Fourth Movement in 1919.

At that historic juncture, overseas Chinese leaders responded to and supported China’s vernacular movement and the call to use Mandarin Chinese in teaching. This had allowed ethnic Chinese children from different dialect groups to learn Chinese in a unified manner using standard Beijing dialect pronunciation, and promotes common language communication between them.

Moreover, the Chinese version of the textbooks introduced at that time, like China, were all taken from the colloquial vernacular Chinese novels closely associated with plain spoken expressions different from the Chinese classics.

Such written language of literary works is convenient for learning and reading. After growing up, Chinese school children can naturally use Mandarin Chinese to communicate more effectively instead of dialects.

Mahathir attended an English school in his primary and high school years and graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Malaya in Singapore in the early 1950s.

Most of the Chinese he knew in the early days were English school students who were not proficient in Mandarin Chinese, and he only listened to them speaking in dialects. And these English school students would also have told him that Mandarin Chinese is not the language of the local Chinese themselves, but a foreign one from northern China. This explains why Mahathir could have developed such a wrong perception.

Mahathir also questioned the identity of the ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. He seems to be pretending to be surprised why the Chinese do not want to assimilate themselves into Malays.

According to him, if they are assimilated, there will be all set, and there will be no racial problems. He cited that Arab Muslims and Indian Muslims like him can assimilate into Malays in just one or two generations. Such words show how naive he is!

As we all know, Chinese and Jews have profound cultural heritage and traditions, and they are not easy to be assimilated. Most of the ancestors of Baba and Nyonya in Malacca and Penang are descendants of early Chinese and Malay women. They have not converted to Islam and are still classified as Chinese in Malaysia’s racial identity category.

Even though the descendants of the Portuguese who occupied Malacca 500 years ago and followed Catholicism are today predominantly Malays by blood, they still insist on their identity denying being Malay. I think Mahathir has never expected it!

Nevertheless, Mahathir did mention the lack of localized identity recognition of many in the Chinese community; which means they recognize China’s national interests are greater than the interests of their own country, Malaysia.

This is certainly not right, and it is not good for striving to maintain our own ethnic Chinese identity in Malaysia!

(Wong Tai-Chee has his B.A and M.A degrees in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Paris, and earned his PhD in Human Geography from the Australian National University. After teaching 20 years in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, he retired in 2013. He then worked as Distinguished Professor for two years at Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, China, and as Dean and Professor at the Southern University College, Johor until the end of 2018. He was Visiting Professor to University of Paris (Sorbonne IV), Visiting Fellow to Pekin University, Tokyo University and University of Western Australia. His main research interests are in urban and economic issues, and more recently on Malaysian politics. Besides his 15 self-authored and edited book volumes, he has written over 100 academic articles and published widely in international journals.)