Thank you, MPH....

In pakdokter's second post on this blog in this series on Mahathir's Memoirs, pakdokter had highlighted the 'binding defect' in pakdokter's copy where pages 57 to 88 were missing. Well, pakdokter had gone back to the store where pakdokter had bought the copy and the manager exchanged the copy with a new one. Pakdokter also learnt from him that so far only one other purchaser had come back to exchange his defective copy.

So, pakdokter guessed that the defect was not that common assuming that 10,000 copies had already been snapped up within the first 2 or 3 days. And reading back pakdokter's comments about the defect, perhaps pakdokter had been too harsh on MPH to the extent of suggesting that an equivalent Japanese Manager would probably want to commit the 'harakiri' for such a mistake.......

Anyway, Thank You, MPH......

Pakdokter has already read up to Chapter 20 of the book which has about 60 chapters or so. And it had been such an interesting read indeed. If not for the 'unusual' heavy load of work at pakdokter's clinic the past 2 days , pakdokter would probably have finished the book by now.....

The first 20 chapters were mostly Mahathir's version of the political history of his life which also provided a perspective of Malaysian political history as seen from the side of Mahathir. Mahathir was frank about his disagreements with Tunku but emphasised that he remained respectful of the first premier and acknowledged Tunku's greatest contribution of achieving independence for Malaya and of successfully putting up a multi-party coalition that brought the different races into a workable Alliance.

His biggest disappointment of the Tunku was his failure to uplift the economic status of the Malays which culminated in the May 13 riots of 1969. In many of these chapters, Mahathir argued ferociously on Malay issues - so much so, pakdokter thinks, that a prejudiced reader would easily and quickly condemn him with the label of a Malay 'rascist'.

So far, in the mainstream media and in facebook discussions, pakdokter has not seen much comments on matters written in these earlier chapters. Most discussions were centred on Anwar Ibrahim's expulsion and, amongst lawyers groups, on Salleh Abbas's sacking. Pakdokter's guessed that these guys went straight to chapters that they were interested in only. And from some of the comments, pakdokter reckons that they have not even read the book!.....