COMMENT | Ramkarpal's excoriation of Mahathir is an indictment of Harapan

"In politics - just as it is in religion - some people get an idea of the necessity of believing certain things, not so much from weight of evidence, out or in - but from mere mental and emotional set-ness: they intend believing - and that (is) all there is about it!"

- US poet Walt Whitman

COMMENT | Ramkarpal Singh’s plain-spoken scathing rebuke against the old maverick comes at a time when the Malay political establishment is at its most tumultuous. As someone who made a very public mea culpa about endorsing the old maverick, I understand where Ramkarpal is coming from.

I made it clear that enabling and supporting Dr Mahathir Mohamad, before the election (by people like me) and after (by bootlickers, sycophants, propagandists, and partisan rakyat) would lead to a big mess. The signs were glaringly obvious but we did not pay attention.

The pro-Mahathir camp, as they do now, holds the threat of a “unified Malay resurgence” over the heads of middle-Malaysia as a warning if we do not support the political machinations of the old maverick. All this, I detailed in this public mea culpa:

“Worried about the far-right and agents of the fascist state coming into power? Well, this is what happens when a coalition breaks up because one man decides to screw everyone over in his coalition.

"This is the price we pay for compromising, enabling, and justifying behaviour anathema to democratic practices, all because we wanted to remove Najib Abdul Razak.

"Worried about Najib coming back? Why? We have voted in kleptocrats for decades and when we had the chance for something new, the elected prime minister said that the manifesto was not worth the paper it was printed on and his erstwhile allies just buried their heads in the sand."

Think back to the time when, after the Sheraton Move, some sort of unity government was in play and folks still blamed Anwar Ibrahim "for being a power-hungry knave when all the old maverick wanted to do was steer the HMS Malaysia through choppy waters."

This is not the first time Ramkarpal has publicly admonished the old maverick. After the Kimanis by-election fiasco in January this year, he said...