Anwar Ibrahim’s Style of Politics

[Update - 27th Sept: At chedet.com, Mahathir has written a post mocking the United States. This was a day after this post went online. Altho' commenter, "By kamal ahmad on September 26, 2008 11:03 PM" has posted a link here - I doubt Mahathir wrote in reference to my thoughts.

To be clear tho', let me just say Mahathir is no exception - his style of politics is no different, if not worse.

See this article: "Mahathir Mohamad, a client of Abramoff’s who paid $2.2 million to arrange a visit with President Bush in 2002 (raw story)". To be fair, Mahathir corrected the reports saying it was 'merely' USD$1.2 million'.

For a list of articles about Mahathir & Abramoff, a conservative lobbyist convicted for corruption in political scandals]

Comments on my recent post about Anwar Ibrahim went from ‘how did you find this stuff?‘ to ‘well, you really don’t like him very much, do you?‘.

I want to clear up a few points:

• First, I have never met Anwar, so I don’t care about the man. I do care about who will lead Malaysia next and I don’t agree with his ‘say anything, do anything‘ style of politics. He does not stand for anything, other than opportunism – as far as I am concerned

Judging Politicians

(from the department-of-the-not-so-blind)

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Erasmus – Dutch philosopher & scholar (1466 – 1536)

Although Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam is not popular today, during the Reformation he was known as ‘Prince of the Humanists’.

Nearly 500 years ago, Erasmus knew that ideas and deep-seated beliefs are more dangerous, and harmful, than the individuals behind such misleading ideas. Similiarly, Prime Ministers of Malaysia may come and go – whether it was Mahathir, is Badawi, and might be Anwar – their practises and ideas last longer than their administration. And if they are wrong, the damage to Malaysia is that much greater.