Romen Bose’s book “Shattered Hopes” on post-2018 politics in Malaysia disclosed former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s views riddled with half-truths and falsehoods. Mahathir is an expert in selective memory to paint a favourable picture of himself. Whilst we can charitably attribute such lapses to senility due to his advanced age, his unbridled political ambitions and motivation for vengeance politics compels me to put the record straight.
As his Finance Minister, I had a ringside seat of his commendable start of his second stint of Prime Minister intent on delivering on our 2018 Pakatan Harapan (PH) General Election manifesto. Unfortunately, this early promise descended rapidly to his open contempt of and flagrantly breaching almost every major election promise made by PH.
From stating that the PH Election Manifesto was not sacrosanct to openly opposing major promises like highway toll reduction, the 2018 Pakatan administration rapidly spiralled into a daily acrimonious battle between those seeking to uphold major election promises against his bully boys led by then PKR Deputy President and Economic Affairs Minister Azmin Ali. No wonder PH popularity plunged when he was intent on fighting his allies as ferociously as his opponents.
Mahathir openly threatened to sack me three times in front of Cabinet meetings. He was openly riled up by my persistent insistence on reducing the North-South Highway toll by 18% over his strenuous objections. He was also opposed to my implementing open tenders for government procurements and granting development allocations to our Members of Parliament. Despite his opposition, I managed to lobby a majority of Cabinet members to agree with these proposals to his chagrin.
Mahathir was also surprised by my opposition to his wish to ban UMNO as a political party. Much as we were opposed to UMNO then, this goes against the grain of fundamental human rights of freedom of association. UMNO did not ban DAP or PKR when we were in the opposition and we would be worse than UMNO should we attempt to do so. I disclosed this to Anwar Ibrahim and we managed to prevail upon Mahathir to abandon his idea.
Mahathir was also angry with the role played by then DAP Damansara MP Tony Pua as my political secretary. He hinted many times that he wanted me to sack him. I refused and made it clear that I would also leave if Mahathir forced the issue.
LIM GUAN ENG
MP FOR BAGAN
