(Petaling Jaya, Monday):
The Prime
Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir
Mohamad yesterday condemned the
international community's response to the Israeli siege of Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat's headquarters, fuming that “there is
no more justice in this world” and that the world now is “not a very
nice place” to live in.
Returning
from the recent
Asia-Europe meeting in Copenhagen, he expressed his frustration over his efforts
writing to French
President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and US President
George W. Bush asking them to pressure Israel into lifting the
siege on Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Mahathir,
who had discussed the matter at
length with Chirac on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe meeting in Copenhagen,
said: "I get the impression
that there is no justice in the world. If we are not liked, anything can to done
(to us) irrespective of whether or not it's fair. In the case of Arafat, it
appears that he is not liked by certain people and as a result, he will not
receive fair treatment because there is no more justice in this world."
Mahathir’s
frustration and outburst against the injustice of an international order under the hegemony of the United States
as the sole hyperpower highlighted by the callous
siege by Israel of
Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah is valid and legitimate – except for two
caveats:
Firstly,
why has Mahathir taken more than two decades to learn the brutal facts of
international life and relations; and
Secondly,
whether Mahathir
is prepared in his final year as
Prime Minister to be more empathetic with those who feel that “Mahathir’s
Malaysia is not a very nice place where there is no justice” in the way that
he fumed that there is no justice in Bush’s world?
Is
Mahathir prepared to review the catalogue of injustices in his more than two
decades as Prime Minister, and in particular the victims of such injustices,
whether Tun Salleh Abas, Lim Guan Eng, Irene Fernandez. Anwar Ibrahim, Mohd Ezam,
Tien Chua, Saari Sungib and
Hishamuddin Rais?
After
experiencing in the raw the
injustice of the international order where he found little response from world
leaders to his efforts to intervene on
behalf of Arafat, is Mahathir prepared to cause a no-holds barred and
wide-ranging Royal Commission of Inquiry to review
his administration of the
past 21 years in all matters which have given cause for Malaysians to
legitimately feel that Malaysia
under his premiership and hegemony was not a very nice place to live and that
there was no justice at all?
Only
Mahathir can appoint such a Royal Commission of Inquiry to conduct a
wide-ranging, independent and
impartial review and assessment of
his 21 years of rule as Prime Minister, and which can still give him the
opportunity to undo somewhat the
grossest and most blatant injustices committed under his watch.
(30/9/2002)