Remember how Mahathir often liked to say that the major decisions of his administration were often made after consulting his Cabinet ministers and obtaining their consensus?
Mohamed Tawfik, the son of the late deputy prime minister Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, has a different take on this.
Tawfik was dropped as an Umno MP in 1990. When asked how that happened, he explains in the cover story of The Edge, Options pullout (for the week of 26 January 2009):
Mahathir called me into his office before the election. I was with my journalist friends when he called, so they started joking that I was going to be made a deputy minister.
Sorry to disappoint them… I went to see Mahathir and the first thing he said was, ‘You know, not every son can be like the father.’…
I thought to myself, bloody insult!