To Live, Forever!
SPECIAL REPORT, Seachange Malaysia
April
29 2001
A worldwide competition for the best solution to enable
Mahathir to live forever has produced dozens of bizarre proposals from as far
afield as Tibet and Russia.
The 75-year old Prime Minister has been in power for 20
years, but enjoys the job so much that he wants to remain Malaysia’s top dog
for all time, although Mother Nature may have other ideas. The ubiquitous
Mahathir, however, has scant regard for the laws of either man or nature.
Speaking from his lavish Palace home,
Mahathir said that it was clear the country still needed him, especially with
the Opposition getting more dangerous by the day. “The country will explode
into the utmost violence, bloodshed and chaos should I die and that is not a
situation we’ll like to see,” he added. “Hence, I owe it to all my
countrymen to live forever.”
There is an RM10 billion reward for anyone who can reverse
the PM’s biological clock. The money has been put up by a consortium of
Mahathir’s cronies, who stand to reap far more in financial benefits from his
everlasting protection.
One cryogenic solution is hardly new: that Mahathir allows
himself to be frozen in liquid nitrogen until such time when science discovers
the means to reverse aging. But the PM is understood to be scornful over the
prospect of an indeterminate deep freeze, with the prospect of being annihilated
should the Opposition come to power while he is in cold storage.
A number of contestants set out their formulas for an
elixir of youth. These have strange ingredients such as specially baked
bullshit, the forked tongue of a viper, the sting of a scorpion and the tears of
a crocodile. While all promised to enable him to continue exercising his
faculties in the style to which has been accustomed to over the last twenty
years, none, however, could provide anything like an ironclad guarantee.
A joint entry from a group of Tibetan monks proffered
reincarnation in the style of their Dalai Lama as the royal road to eternal
power. They accordingly offered their supernatural skills to help locate a
re-born Mahathir. But the all-powerful PM does not relish the prospect of being
once more reduced to a helpless infant, with the very real risk of being done
away with before he is old enough to re-enter UMNO.
A more likeable proposal perhaps is progressive organ
transplant, whereby Mahathir’s worn-out heart, lungs, liver, kidneys and all
major organs will be replaced one at a time by newer substitutes. While the
authoritarian leader will have no problem putting himself at the head of any
organ recipient list, it is not known how the more difficult organs such as
skin, bones and nervous system can be replaced. And the PM is never someone to
go by half-measures.
A Russian scientist, however, has submitted a far more
elegant solution: that Mahathir’s entire brain be transplanted into a younger
body. This presumes that some young man will be willing to donate his entire
self minus the grey matter, but it is expected that there will be no lack of
volunteers from among the UMNO faithful. The donor’s brain will obviously have
to be trashed, since it would be a waste of time transferring it to Mahathir’s
decrepit body. But the PM’s brain will continue to age even when transplanted,
hence this does not appear to be a long-term solution.
There may, however, be a high-tech answer to this, using
the new science of computer neural networks. A professor at MIT has proposed
that Mahathir’s entire brain be rebuilt, neuron-by-neuron, using transistors
and that all his inter-neural connections be replicated using electronic
circuits. The artificial brain would then be able to control a robot. The PM is
reportedly attracted by the possibility of a world technological first: Mahathir
re-invented as robot can be expected to do wonders for the faltering Multimedia
Super Corridor. Unfortunately there is much doubt as to whether this machine
would then possess normal human feelings, in particular, greed, hypocrisy,
cruelty, hatred, vindictiveness and ruthlessness of which Mahathir has in
plenty.
Malaysian bomohs (witch-doctors) have not been slow with
their home-grown solutions. One of them promised to draw Mahathir’s soul out
through his nostrils and into the body of a healthy target. The strong-minded
Mahathir will then be able to unceremoniously expel the other soul with a flying
kick, thus fully possessing the body. There is obvious appeal in so simple a
technique — no messy operations or painstaking electronic reconstruction
— except that Mahathir has never really believed in souls, despite
being a nominal Muslim.
With the prize money still unclaimed, Malaysians are
breathing a huge sigh of relief. Said one: “Let us hope that nature takes its
course before anyone comes up with any more brilliant ideas. We have always
known that only the Hand of God can remove him.” For Mahathir who has never
before lost any of life’s battles, the Grim Reaper could well prove to be too
much of a match.