The danger of success is that long periods of adulation and unquestioned support can lead to the conclusion that one is infallible. That this is not so can come as a shock, as it appears to have come to Dr. Mahathir.

PN are in power now for one reason and one only. And that is that the Dr. preferred to do whatever was necessary to prevent Anwar from succeeding him. That, and only that, opened the road for the appointment of a Prime Minister for whom none of the MLAs canvassed by the Agong voted but was still appointed. Why has yet to be publicly explained but all will come out in due course and most will not be creditable.

In any case the end result has ben a “government” so terrified of losing its tenuous grip on office that it was prepared to plunge the nation into emergency conditions to avoid a session of Parliament which threatened to see it defeated over the budget and returned to ignominious opposition; powerful backing notwithstanding.

And all the because one politician dislikes another so much that he would do, and did, what was necessary to block him even to the extent of destroying the first honest government in decades; and that includes his own former ones. What seems to be lacking is a sense of nationhood.