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Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Mahatir Why Should You Defend, Explain or Justify? The Most 'Winning' Charlie Sheen Parodies on Mahatir and his 1nightstand UMMI


Why You Should Never Defend, Explain Or Justify

Dr Mahathir at his book launch today at MidValley Mall in Kuala Lumpur. — Picture by Choo Choy May

KUALA LUMPUR, March 8 — Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah would have become prime minister if he was more patient, said Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in his autobiography which was released today.
The former prime minister also accused the Team B faction led by the Kelantan prince of a dirty campaign to unseat him as president in the fractious Umno elections of 1987 — resulting in the High Court declaring Umno illegal.
“Had Tengku Razaleigh been more patient, he would probably have taken Tun Musa (Hitam)’s place as deputy prime minister and eventually become prime minister,” Dr Mahathir wrote in his book titled “A Doctor in the House: The Memoirs of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.”
“I even considered re-appointing Tengku Razaleigh to the Cabinet, but after he gave an interview to the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine that was very critical of me and the government, I had to change my mind,” he added.
Dr Mahathir also said that he held no grudges against Tun Musa Hitam, who was Dr Mahathir’s deputy from 1981 to 1987 but then teamed up with Tengku Razaleigh in the party election.
He pointed out that he appointed Musa to several posts such as special envoy to the United Nations with ministerial rank in 1990 and then as Malaysian Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) chief in 1999.
Malaysia’s longest serving prime minister claimed in the book that Tengku Razaleigh’s Team B had resorted to money politics in the campaign.
“We also heard that Team B spent about RM20 million on their campaign, with most of the money provided by Tengku Razaleigh himself,” he wrote.
“Voting had to be halted halfway for members to attend Friday congregational prayers, but Team B supporters used the interval to campaign. They were seen following targeted delegates to their hotels, even into the toilet, and I was told that a lot of money changed hands,” he said of the party polls that took place on April 24, 1987.
“They also circulated a photograph of me with a Chinese lady who they alleged was my Singaporean wife. In fact, she was the wife of an old university classmate, and the picture had been taken at their daughter’s wedding,” he added.
As he had more than double Tengku Razaleigh’s nominations, Dr Mahathir also said that he did not see the need to campaign until Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, then the Umno Youth chief, urged him to campaign seriously as the former deputy prime minister was not so certain of victory.
“He knew his fortunes were tied with mine and if I lost, he would likely be dumped,” he wrote.
Dr Mahathir eventually defeated Tengku Razaleigh by 761 votes to 718 and Anwar would rise to deputy president in the future before being sacked by Dr Mahathir in 1998.
Anwar was then jailed for sodomy and corruption, although the sodomy conviction was overturned by the Federal Court in 2004.
However, Tengku Razaleigh was not willing to accept defeat and challenged the results in court on the grounds that 53 Umno branches were not properly registered.
High Court judge Tan Sri Harun Hashim eventually dismissed the suit but ruled that the existence of unregistered branches meant that Umno itself was an illegal party.
In 1988, Dr Mahathir registered a new party, Umno Baru, that exists up to now, although it is now simply known as Umno.

Why do some people seem to be forever defending, explaining or justifying themselves? Do you enjoy being around this person? Are you one yourself?
Quite the opposite from the critics who have been the subject of recent articles on complaints and criticism, this person becomes tiresome not because of a string of complaints, but more because of the somewhat toxic nature of self-defense.
Years ago, as the personal transformation wave was cresting via large group seminars, several of us started using a made-up word to highlight the toxic nature of self-defense and explanation: dexify. The word even seems to connote something toxic all by itself.
Certainly, someone who engages in dexification (there's another use that may suggest something kind of dark) seems to be sliding down a spiraling path of negativity. What's so negative about defending yourself, you might ask?On the one hand, nothing really, especially if there's something there to defend. However, I am not referring to the kind of self-defense you might need when wrongly accused of something, especially something heinous or criminal. However, there's a difference between that kind of self-defense and the more common defend-explain-justify behavior that many of us seem to engage in almost daily.
Dr Mahathir Mohamad dedicated 20 pages of his memoirs into detailing how he came to know about Anwar Ibrahim’s alleged sexual liaisons with men and women, leading to the latter’s sacking in 1998.ZIONIST BAPTIZED PARAIAN AHMAD ZAHID WILL RATHER SHARE BED WITH UMNO’S PROSTITUTE UMMI HAFILDA ALI THEN BREAK THE WALLS OF MUSLIM DIVISION Umno vice-president …Read more  MAHATIR PARIAH CASTE OF ALL THETHULUKKANS;HEAR THIS JUSTICE MOHD HISHAMUDIN MOHD YUNUS AWARDED BROTHER AWAR IBRAHIM RM4MIL FOR DEFAMATION AND RM500,000 FOR CONSPIRACY TO INJURE.  To be fair, I know I have certainly done my fair share of dexification. The main problem in day-to-day life is that when you choose to dexify, you almost always sound guilty-as-charged. I know that when I find myself in justification mode, there's almost always some part of me that feels insecure about the area, perhaps even wondering-fearing-believing that it must be true.There may well be several moving parts here, but allow me to underscore a critical aspect that may be operative and why dexification is usually not all that helpful. The worst possible scenario might be that the criticism is accurate and I'm simply digging myself a deeper hole by dexifying.Some time ago, I wrote an article on this subject, citing a lesson learned from Bucky Fuller about how we can benefit from our perceived enemies. The gist of the story: after a wonderful lecture on the value of seeking to understand and be understood, Bucky took questions from the audience. One gentleman took the microphone and proceeded to tell Bucky that he was full of beans, didn't know what he was talking about, and had no basis for his point of view. Bucky considered the comment, and replied, "Thank you."After a couple of more rounds of this kind of exchange-attack, wherein the gentleman kept going after Bucky, trying to provoke a reaction, Bucky taught us all a great lesson in self-awareness by saying something like this: Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew longed to be prime minister of the much bigger Malaysia, political arch-foe Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said in his memoirs out today.“The Singapore of the early 1960s was too small for him and his ambitions. Malaysia was a real country, not a city-state and to become Prime Minister of Malaysia would satisfy his ambitions, especially for power and a more than municipal role,” Dr Mahathir, Malaysia’s PM from 1981 to 2003, wrote in his autobiography “A Doctor In The House: The Memoirs of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad”.The 84-year-old said that when Malaya’s foremost freedom fighter, Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj, first spoke of a bigger country made up of the peninsula, Singapore and all of Borneo, “Lee eagerly welcomed it”.“He even aspired to become its Prime Minister, something he knew was entirely possible because the Chinese would make up the biggest racial group in the Federation,” Dr Mahathir added.When Malaya won its independence in 1957, the Malays were slightly more than half the total population of the peninsula, the Chinese 30 per cent, the Indians about 10 per cent and the rest a mix of other races.

Dr Mahathir blamed this on the British colonial masters who had allowed the Chinese to migrate freely into the strategic island port to safeguard their trade in the Far East.
He wrote that colonial Britain had turned Singapore into a Chinese settlement, and effectively, a Chinese country after independence, where the Malays were second-class citizens.
“Not the kind of person to be content with a secondary role, Lee saw Malaysia as his chance to dominate a substantial nation and become its Prime Minister,” Dr Mahathir said.
He said that Lee was not bothered to correct the disparities between the Malays and the non-Malays and had instead banked on Chinese votes on both the island state and the peninsula to boost his standing as leader of the People’s Action Party’s (PAP) position for the prime ministership of Malaysia.
“He denounced what he called Malay racism, but in expecting the Chinese to support him as a Chinese who would uphold Chinese interests, he revealed himself as a racist,” Dr Mahathir said.



Did you not notice that each time I paused to consider what you had to say? I looked inside myself to see if some part of me was reacting to what you had said about me, particularly if some part of me were upset, prone to counterattack, or otherwise affected. I have found that when I am in that kind of reaction, there is typically something there for me to learn about myself, something for which I need to improve. In this instance, I found no reaction. Thus, you were simply sharing your opinion to which you are fully entitled and with which I have no argument. Therefore, "Thank you" seemed most appropriate.
Indeed, Bucky Fuller demonstrated considerable self-awareness and personal integrity throughout his life, and this little exchange has been a guiding light for me for years. Learning to see the reaction inside myself as feedback about me, pointing out areas of growth, not something to be defended, has been both expansive and liberating for me.
I have learned that when I feel the need to dexify myself, some part of me is almost always of the opinion that they must be right and I must be wrong. The defending, explaining and justifying never seems to change anything and, instead, tends to anchor me more deeply in the issue that needs to be addressed.
If you recognize this tendency in yourself, here's a little tip that I have found personally useful whenever I have the courage to use it. Courage, by the way, is an interesting word that typically means something about physical or mental strength or bravery. Its roots, however, go to the Latin and French words for "heart." I have heard it said that the suffix of the word, "age," means something like "wisdom." If you put the two together, you get "the wisdom of the heart."
The next time you find yourself under attack and are about to resort to dexification, consider the wisdom of your own heart. Look inside yourself to your own reactions. If, like Bucky, you find yourself in reaction mode, consider that there might be a kernel of truth here for you, perhaps an entire bushel-full. If there is something there, then draw a bit more on that source of heartfelt wisdom and dive into the question even further, perhaps saying something like, "That's very interesting. Can you say some more about what you see or how you see this playing out in my behavior?"
I know that for many this seems somewhere between silly and incomprehensible. Why on earth would you invite even more criticism, especially in an area where you might already feel uncomfortable?
It's simple, really. You just might learn something that will liberate you. You may find yourself growing in confidence and inner strength as you choose inquiry over dexification. You might also wind up closing a gap between you and the other person. After all, it does take great courage to step closer in the face of criticism, and your sincere inquiry may melt away something that prevents you from being even more effective.

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