Marina Mahathir would have often seen her father “viciously attacked” by haters.
Last week, however, was the first time ever that Mahathir saw his daughter attacked at a level “only reserved for people that one deeply hates”.
Indeed Marina suffered a sudden steep fall in public esteem after her “major factual mistake” made her vulnerable to criticisms.
And she has her Bangsa Malaysia cohort partly to thank.
Yesterday, Wong Chun Wai – the big boss of The Star – touched briefly on how that major factual mistake was left undetected in Marina’s column published in his newspaper.
According to Wong, “the copy clearer at The Star failed to notice the error”.
Wong added that under normal circumstances, there would have been a second line of defence. But the “editor who cleared her copy was probably not born yet [in 1979] to be able to spot Marina’s error”.
The above excuse provided by Wong is surely weak sauce. Any responsible editor not yet born in 1969, for instance, should nonetheless possess enough grasp of his work to sift any May 13 factual details.
Another example: Foreign correspondents not yet born in 1962 can still cite evidential facts of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which happened that year, when writing a comparison to the current Russia-Nato standoff in Ukraine.
BELOW: ‘The Star’ postures as Malaysian First moderates
As someone who has worked before in The Star, I can suggest a more persuasive reason why Marina’s major factual mistake was not caught by either the copy clearer or the editor.
What I understood from my (former) editorial floor colleagues back then assigned to process the drafts submitted by Marina, was that her articles were to be handled with kid gloves.
And they felt wary or were made to feel wary about changing a single comma. Certainly nobody would dream of daring to rejig (newspaper jargon) her raw copy (another jargon).
It just may not be a normal practice for the current crop of Star copyeditors to even harbour the thought of fact-checking Mighty Marina.
In this case, her entitled copy evidently sailed through without proper vetting because the ‘Mahathir’ name is after all a magic pass key.
If Marina’s major factual mistake had been corrected before Sunday Star went to print, she would have been spared the online roasting she subsequently received.
Marina was one of them
The Star is a Bangsa Malaysia paper, as is Malaysiakini.
Marina is a Bangsa Malaysia icon. They always coddle their own.
Which is how previously Marina managed to avert negative coverage (in journalism lingo, this protective bubble crafted by media is called “killing the story”) before her Jan 30 blowup.
As a parallel example, legacy media was awash with hymns and praises for Jill Biden.
The close relationship between Marina and her parents is well known.
Last week, Mahathir saw his beloved daughter being pounced upon — mainly because Marina’s “shoo” misattribution was so egregious that her position became indefensible.
Mahathir must be glad that the metaphorical sticks and stones thrown at Marina were only mere hurtful words.
In the final reckoning, Marina remains highly networked, socially privileged and insulated by her wealth. The same cannot be said for the Malay B40.
Sheraton Move. Why?
Mahathir was instrumental in kicking Harapan out from Putrajaya.
His Malay party Bersatu could not abide remaining a minute longer as DAP’s coalition partner.
My own hypothesis is Mahathir feared that with DAP in power (a condition stretching into the future), Chinese would bully Malays.
Mahathir‘s thinking has been consistent through the long decades.
In The Malay Dilemma, 1970, Mahathir was preoccupied with rich Chinese traders whom he thought resembled the predatory Jewish merchants.
At the Kongres Maruah Melayu, 2019, Mahathir’s preoccupation was still with Chinese shopkeepers — recalling his early memory of Alor Setar where “semua kedai-kedai lain dimiliki orang Cina”.
The passing of fifty years has not diminished Mahathir’s obsession with the economic status of Malays vis-a-vis Chinese.
One of his persistent tics is the pushy Chinese towkay. Seared into Mahathir’s soul is the humiliation of ‘Ahmad’, a quintessential Malay name, becoming the stand-in colloquial word for ‘driver’.
Mahathir does not tire either of old, dated anecdotes about the unseemly sight of a well-to-do Chinese being chauffeured about town by his Malay subordinate.
At the macro level, Mahathir finds the accumulation of capital in Chinese hands concerning. He appears to fear that Malay labour will be subjugated to the Chinese business class.
BELOW: Beating Malays into submission means making them admit they’re stupid and racist as per this political cartoon
Chinese bullying Malays, really?
I think so, yes.
In my opinion, DAP are super cyberbullies.
DAP leaders were bullying Najib’s three-month old cat. Chinese opposition supporters were bullying Najib’s pandas — see my blog post yesterday for details.
@hannahyeoh tweeted “How low class is our Prime Minister?” (below). Her insult was addressed to Najib two months before BN was successfully toppled.
Two weeks ago, Hannah’s buddy Syahredzan Johan – also pol-sec to Lim Kit Siang – also tweeted that Najib is “low class”.
On Jan 25, Syahredzan apologized to Najib after acknowledging that he (Melayu DAP poster boy) had deleted the tweet in which he labelled Najib “low class” — below.
I have long observed a pattern of DAP politicians calling Malay establishment figures “low class” or “no class”. This is par for the course.
Last week, it was the shock of Marina being called all kinds of names.
It has been open season on Najib since forever. The guns were also trained against whichever individual (wife, daughter, grandson) is linked to Najib as well as mockery rained on anything remotely connected to Najib, i.e. kittens, cats, pandas, the price of chicken …
The vilification of Najib is DAP’s favourite bloodsport.
On the other hand, Marina had been shielded from online abuse because Dapsters begitu teruja dengan Melayu liberal. This love affair lasted until the dam broke after her ‘shoo’ didn’t fit.
Two days ago, I explained why it is logical to deduce that the netizens attacking Marina are DAP supporters.
I’m now going to additionally conjecture that Marina’s cyber attackers are not Iban, Dayak, Bidayuh, Kadazan, Dusun, Murut or Lun Bawang.
Yeah, we’re in race politics territory.
So what do you think Mahathir is ruminating on with regard to his daughter dodging the ‘friendly’ fire of cyber bullets?
When he looks back on the Sheraton Move, do you believe that Mahathir will adjudge he did right or that he did wrong?
Helen Ang 
Our compatriots had the greatest opportunity in the World to be the World’s best even better than World’s best Singapore, pre-Covid-19 virus if the Leadership had developed a Malay elite after the First Gen was wiped out by the BMF Scandal of 1982, kept away from monopolistic partnerships with others and set a good example for others to emulate. Alas ! Money corrupted absolutely. When Leaderships emerged to gain or to protect their undeserved gains, the Nation and her Rakyat will have endless problems which are mainly focused on personal affairs and not the Nation’s. We still have the Cassandras who popped up now and then to say their piece of wisdom. With 18 year olds now joining the political fray and a Bill to stop changing one’s political affinity at a whim, our beloved Malaysia is certainly scraping the bottom of the barrel to achieve political greatness even the UK has sunk to lower depths than ever before ! The Dewan Rakyat has given to creating Mickey Mouse cartoons but not to paint out by large brush strokes to complete a big picture which should be Malaysia’s destiny to be one of four very important small nations of the World being the UK, Japan, Switzerland and Malaysia. To create the Malay elites, the Nation must have Leaders better than the elites themselves according to a common belief that is,” a Leader who only passed Form 4 will not employ one who has passed Form 5 !” This happy state of affairs only happened once during the Great Statesman, Tun Abdul Razak’s Administration, 1972 – 1975. Hence, our beloved Malaysia’s perennial problem. Not only that, it is engraved in stone in our revered Constitution as safe-guarded by our caring and compassionate Yang Di Pertuan Agong and the Royal Sultans that all join hands to move and progress. Hence, without the Malay elites to jive with the non-Malay elites, nothing happens. Vide. Dato Khaled’s comments in recent days. To bolster good governance, our beloved Malaysia needs a well-established Middle Income group of Malays and non-Malays. The former was established during the Administration of TDM with the creation of at least 6 million Malay families with Middle Incomes. At the present moment ,with no Malay elites to lead the Malay Middle Income group, political instability reigns with the establishment of many small political tents, each headed by one big chief. All established by easy money. The numerous non-Malay elites will have to twiddle their thumbs and wait for the proper scenario to appear to point our Nation the Way to success for all and to put back a sound Administrative System back to normal and commonsense working order, the way we all were accustomed to many years ago. Reforms are for pre-puberty Boy Scouts who still have to learn much about our revered Constitution as safe-guarded by our caring and compassionate Yang Di Pertuan Agong and the Royal Sultans. It’s the digits not the Law as someone once said ! Ask BK of Singapore ! But in this fast changing World of the Net and the Covid-19 virus, the longer the Malay elites appear, the faster our beloved Malaysia will slip down the slippery pole to Venezuela. In other words, money should no longer be a big factor in our Nation’s political equation but the Malay elites with no wealth and the non-Malay elites should be the flavor of the day ! This normal equation balances for the enlightened Administration to have a good and proper governance for the benefit of the Rakyat.
To build a developed country, we must be inclusive and not be assumptive of the intentions of others whose thinking we will never know. In a country of only 32 millions, if there is no sharing and understanding with each other, we can only watch as other countries sail by which is the case of our beloved Malaysia today. As a matter of fak, we are now behind the Philippines. Malaysia, a country full of promise, potential, natural abundance and good peoples who have proven to be hard-working and productive but sadly, lacks the requisite Leadership to reach for the sky. Per Ardua Ad Astra. To be one of the four most important countries of the World being the UK, Japan, Switzerland and Malaysia. Our beloved Malaysia is a country now loaded with the most number of public holidays in the World. It is alleged that soon the minimum wage will be RM 1,500 per month and teachers may be permitted to take part in politics. As it is, we are already over-politized with 18 year olds joining the fray and numerous NGOs and political parties to boot. With every one who is not a non-Malay making the bee-line towards the Prime Minister-ship in accordance with our Malaysian Style Democracy. When Malaysia was stable and boring not too long ago, all seemed to be satisfied and unsullied by money. But a complete change took place as the GLCs took hold of the mind-sets via politics for their nefarious activities. Only 4 countries in the World have GLCs being Singapore, China, Russia and Malaysia. Only Malaysia is not authoritarian. A GLC was invented by Lee Kuan Yew in tiny Singapore because of the lack of private capital and entrepreneurs. He controlled them personally. But China and Russia found out that it was impossible to control the GLCs in their vast lands and corruption reigned. There are 100 Chinese on the run from China. And Malaysia has over 100 GLCs which do not make money. The facts presented here illustrate the dire lack of vision on how to put the sum of the parts to be greater than the whole. This is the most important question facing our beloved Malaysia’s Leadership today. In Singapore, there are 700,000 Chinese aged 21-50 (Vide Singapore Government Population Survey 2010) who are struggling for Singapore to remain sustainable and viable because out of the blue, the Covid-19 virus destroyed Lee Kuan Yew’s political-socio-economic mandate for ex-World class Singapore.. In Malaysia, we have less than a handful in the cockpit but a humongous Cabinet of 73 which is the largest in the World per capita. Hence, with the daily political going-ons, the bread and butter issues must be addressed for us to return to our OLD NORMAL if not the NEW NORMAL.. Marina or no Marina !