Malaysians with a sense of humour may be entertained by Mahathir Mohamad’s belated enthusiasm for clean government and outspoken democratic debate. In his 22 years as their prime minister, the prickly Dr Mahathir was not noted for his tolerance of criticism, constructive or otherwise. Newspapers toed the government line or soon found themselves in difficulty, and judges whose rulings were not to Dr Mahathir’s liking were unceremoniously dismissed.

It was an open secret that his method of governing combined strong state intervention with complex patterns of political patronage, but curiosity about the lucrative business opportunities enjoyed by his sons and specially favoured associates was robustly discouraged. Anwar Ibrahim, the deputy he initially groomed to succeed him, spent years in prison on trumped-up charges for daring to say publicly that corruption had reached critical dimensions.

How things change. Having reluctantly relinquished the reins of power three years ago, Dr Mahathir has done with such taboos. Claiming that he is “saving the nation from disaster”, he has launched streams of unproven and damaging allegations against Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, his successor as Prime Minister. These include nepotism, incompetence and even selling out the country — this last because of the sensible decision to cancel a pet Mahathir mega-project, a somewhat pointless bridge that would have gone only halfway across the Johore Strait between Malaysia and Singapore

Datuk Badawi not only has done nothing to prevent him having his say, but also, after months of suffering his sniping with dignified calm, invited him a week ago to his official residence for a “peace meeting” with no one else present. There, for nearly two hours, he dutifully took notes as Dr Mahathir listed his grievances. The courtesy was ill-rewarded; the very next day, Dr Mahathir called a press conference to announce that he was the victim of a “police state” that had “taken away” his civic rights.

This is no joking matter. The problem is not unfamiliar. Dr Mahathir admits that he considered Datuk Badawi “harmless” — in other words, content to take dictation. He is hardly the first political leader to be appalled by the discovery that apparently docile protégés can develop a mind of their own once installed in office, or the first to take that revelation badly. Baroness Thatcher’s disillusion with John Major comes to mind.

But Dr Mahathir has gone far beyond mutterings of discontent. He denies it, but it is by now obvious that he is openly campaigning to replace Datuk Badawi, who won a landslide electoral victory only two years ago, with Najib Razak, the deputy prime minister whom he publicly regrets not having chosen for the top job.

Malaysia may have had a surfeit of forced consensus politics during Dr Mahathir’s long reign, but the vendetta he is conducting has little to do with robust political debate, and a lot to do with one man’s obsession with himself.