Dr M: Chinese are rich and Indians are lawyers
Milosevic: I wish I could be as poor as former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his family.
I wish all the so-called marginalised Indians and displaced plantation workers, who find themselves resorting to criminal activity and murdered in jail, would come clean and tell us that they actually have medical and legal degrees, and apologise for making the government look bad.
I wish Mahathir would liberate himself from his frozen ideas contained in his book ‘The Malay Dilemma’, and show us that old men need not act like King Lear, and can update their ideas.
I wish he could see that he is a major factor in the making of inequality that American economist Joseph Stiglitz mentions, and a major driver of hudud, although he is against hudud, because of the way he ruled the country.
Capable, clean secular governments, which escape Stiglitz's path, will never produce societies where religion surfaces as the salvation ideology.
He declared Malaysia an Islamic state as he undermined clean, open, secular government. Is there a hudud punishment for this?
Aries46: Mahathir took all of three days to conjure how to hit back at US President Barack Obama and all that he managed was to berate perceived inequalities in the United States as against the institutionalised racism and discrimination in Malaysia that Obama referred to.
Inequality is a reality in societies that practices meritocracy and to equate that to the reprehensible apartheid-like policies here amounts to deception.
Mahathir’s diatribe is also flawed in that Obama speaks as a black president in white majority US whereas non-Malays here are almost obliterated from all higher level public service appointments, let alone the premiership.
Mahathir's rebuttal amounts to comparing apples with langsat. Mahathir also has no right to use the economic position of the non-Malays to counter the extreme policies of Umno.
Non-Malays toiled hard for their success and don’t owe him or Umno any favours. In reality, the so-called wealthy Malaysians are a fraction of the population and the majority is struggling at the lower levels with stagnated wages.
Absalom: Mahathir, your reasoning about Indian doctors and wealthy Chinese is deliberately myopic.
For every Indian doctor, there probably are 1,000 displaced estate workers, hardcore poor and disadvantaged. Same with the Chinese, and same with the Malays, although maybe the ratios are different.
You just want to justify your previous lopsided policies, wastage and crony capitalism, and your present wealth because you most likely now belong to that one percent.
What is wrong with equality and treating the minority as equals for the purpose of uplifting the disadvantaged?
Don't pretend to speak for the Malay masses because they may only be slightly better off under all the affirmative policies which saw you and some cronies leap-frog to become multi-millionaires and even billionaires.
Ian2003: Mahathir, please understand this - Obama says that Malaysia will not succeed, and not Malaysians will not succeed.
There is a difference here. Many Malaysians are successful in their individual right as you have clearly pointed out but we are sad that Malaysia as a nation is falling behind other countries.
Even Vietnam is catching up and if we do not unite as Malaysians but are kept divided by race and religion, I wouldn't be surprise that even Cambodia may overtake us one day.
Speaking Sense: What Mahathir doesn't want to admit is that in Malaysia, the Umno government is actively and deliberately discriminating against non-Malays and non-Muslims.
The non-Malays and non-Muslims may have done well, but it is only because they work hard, despite Umno's all-out efforts to create an unequal playing field for them in favour of their own cronies.
There is inequality in other countries, true - but these inequalities are not because of their governments' deliberate unfair policies, which is the case in Umno’s Malaysia.
Ksn: If the Chinese are rich, they did it by sheer hard work and the risks they took. If a few Indians are professionals, it is the result of the sacrifices their parents made for their studies.
They did not wait for handouts from public funds, tax paid mostly by the Chinese and Indian professionals.
By the way, exactly how many Chinese are rich and how many Indians are professionals? I am under the clear impression that Indians are all gangsters. Neither MIC nor its masters Umno Baru helped the Indians displaced from the plantations, hence their pathetic state now.
You said those who did not come to Malaysia are not so fortunate. How ignorant you are of China and India. Your perverse logic disgusts Malaysians that you were the country's PM for 22 years.
Oriole: Mahathir, your question shows how out of touch you are with the real state of affairs in this country. It also shows why you are most unfit to speak on these matters.
Your policies were largely responsible for the worsening lives of the poor regardless of race. But your arrogance has led to such blindness. The current state of the nation is the nation's condemnation of you.
LAWofKARMA: Mahathir, using your yardstick, I would say since as a Malay, you are staying in the super rich area, and your son, a Malay, is super rich and is in the list of top 10 richest men in Malaysia, then all Malays are super rich.
So in Malaysia, the Chinese are rich, Indians are rich and Malays are rich. Only the Orang Asli (the real bumiputera) are poor. Do you agree, Mahathir?
Mahathir, stop babbling about the 1 percent
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