So, yesterday’s melodrama that was Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, ostensibly quitting Umno on the “dare” of a Pas heckler/operative (that’s what Pas is giddily bragging anyway), goading party members to follow him down the yellow brick road of redemption and demanding the Prime Minister to step down to atone for the slew of errors that adversely reversed Barisan Nasional’s polls fortunes. Dr Mahathir wants it to be that simple? Perhaps not, at least not in the way that he may have envisioned it, famous as he is for his “visions.”

At the Dewan Rakyat today, proceedings in the House routinely centred on the mundane winding-up of Ministers responding to points raised by MPs during the debate on the royal address but in the many interjections and supplementary queries, the MPs were soberly silent on the “M” word, consciously ignoring the one-man juggernaut who may have a bearing on the way the House’s balance of power is currently composed while they focused on the business of the day, and give the Ministers a hard time.

Outside the House at one of Parliament’s operation rooms during lunch break, Abdullah summoned 70 Umno MPs, with the intent on gauging their sentiments against Dr Mahathir's grave desertion, and then articulating the cause and effect of what would happen to the Barisan Government if anyone heeded Dr Mahathir’s radical call to resign en masse. If anything, Abdullah’s call to arms of Umno MPs to neutralise Dr Mahathir’s threat triggered a much-needed reaction – with the exception of several absentees, conspicuously Dr Mahathir’s son, Mukhriz (BN-Jerlun), the 70 MPs roared approvingly of Datuk Mohamed Aziz’s (BN-Sri Gading) pledge of loyalty to Abdullah, Umno and the Government, banging tables like the habitual animation inside the House if someone bleats something agreeable.

It has to be noted though that in Dr Mahathir’s time when he was facing the multitude of fractious crises called Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah (in 1987) and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (in 1998), he too was blanketed with the same kind of pledges of support. That’s what you expect to receive when you are Umno president.

In the meantime, Mukhriz quickly left the “discomfort” of Parliament House and headed to the swankiness of the Seri Pacific Hotel minutes away where hours later, he defied expectations that he would be the first MP to jump into dad’s circling-of-the-wagon posture by NOT resigning, preferring to re-parrot his earlier call that Abdullah gives up the Umno presidency and with it, the Prime Minister’s office. To carry out this consistent badgering, Mukhriz, an Umno Youth exco member, also prefers to stay so that he can criticise Abdullah from within the party. Now that’s a guilelessly strategic placement.
For now and throughout the taxing periods of Umno branch and divisional meetings-cum-elections, based on Mukhriz’s no-brainer tactics, Dr Mahathir’s resignation play will soon crystallise. He will assume the role of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the colourfully ambiguous man whose pipe playing rid the town of Hamelin of a bad rat infestation, hypnotising the rodents to jump unquestioningly into the Weser River and drown. When the town’s fathers double-crossed the Piper by refusing to pay for his services, he used the same hypnotic music to lure the town’s children to jump into the same river. Revenge exacted.

The metaphor may be arduous but you get the drift. Let’s make this clear: Dr Mahathir is a politician you don’t trifle with and someone you never, ever underestimate. Ask Razaleigh or Anwar or Tun Musa Hitam. Lee Kuan Yew didn’t. Obviously, Dr Mahathir’s clarion call for mass resignation is just that: a call, a verbal epiphany marking the end of a very long tenure as Umno member, which he regards to be as useful as a RM3 bill. Dr Mahathir doesn’t really expect Umno leaders/members, especially its MPs, to resign by the planeloads even at his Pied Piping behest. Likewise, he doesn’t even expect them to behave like the mythical lemmings, willing to jump of a cliff in mass suicide as part of Darwin’s evolutionary twist. There’s a parallel plot twist here.

Dr Mahathir doesn’t think that he can conjure mass hypnosis over Umno leaders/members like Hypnos, the mythical Greek god of sleep, but he can readily apply 60 long years of political experience, embarrassingly rich in the art of war, actual war, crises, confrontations, vicious political battles, intellectual debates, in-fighting, internecine conflicts, barefaced clashes, putdowns, humiliation and comebacks. At a spirited 83, age for Dr Mahathir is inconsequential (there is still that persistent urban legend that he opts for a total blood transfusion in Switzerland annually while he regularly gulps down Pharmaton capsules for energy and longevity). The mind is still superior even if the body wilts. And it is that mind that is at work here as he conceptualised a very comprehensive blueprint on how to get rid of a person perceived to be powerful and unshakeable. What it is will be anyone’s assessment but they will emerge in a complexity of variables, which means it’s anybody’s guess!

In his long political career spanning at least three generations, Dr Mahathir clashed with Harry Lee in the Dewan Rakyat back in the mid-1960s in such bravado and fluent style that Singapore’s Minister Mentor, as the story goes, was obliged to declare then that Dr Mahathir was a Prime Minister in the making. In 1969 came the famous expulsion after Dr Mahathir bitterly dissented against Tunku Abdul Rahman, giving him many moments of thinking time to pen The Malay Dilemma, an opus that many considered to be the soul of the New Economic Policy.

But his bigger battles and crises littered like landmines in the killing fields during his 22-year stint as Prime Minister and Umno president:
 he staved off Musa, who in a pique of resentment, resigned as Deputy Prime Minister, and hooked up with one-time nemesis Razaleigh;
 he faced the Razaleigh-Musa tag team in a divisive Umno dogfight for the Umno leadership in 1987 and scraped through;
 he took on the monarchy twice, in 1983 and 1992, and tempered their highnesses’ indulgences;
 he confronted currency speculators, George Soros, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and Al Gore, by entering the ring, punching radical ideas suggested by Paul Krugman to save the country’s economy from tanking, and survived;
 he took on the judiciary in 1988 on what he perceived as disorderly conduct of judges, and survived, and is still fighting the accusatory repercussions of being responsible for Tun Salleh Abbas’ sacking; and,
 he sacked his protégé, the then wunderkind Anwar Ibrahim, for a litany of crimes that many of the ex-PM’s critics still bitterly dispute today, checked a revolt called Reformasi, endured a beating in the 1999 polls, a barrage of Anwar’s lawsuits, and presto! he is still a thick thorn in Anwar’s side despite the latter’s domination of the political discourse.

These are just some major samples of his propensity to face crises head on but one recurring theme was that Dr Mahathir, while he may not have fought on a level playing field, had the gumption to tackle very tough contenders, pretenders and opportunists at every nook and corner of the global stage. And the other recurring theme? His rivals have always underestimated his capacity to retaliate, and retaliate with more superior strategy and tactics. If Dr Mahathir had been born an American and having the same disposition for politics as he has now, he would no doubt have made it as a two-term US president on a hot Republican ticket.

Dr Mahathir’s attacks against Abdullah from 2006 on various contentious issues are just the first phase of his long-term blueprint embedded sagaciously inside his mind. Forget about getting a hard/soft copy because there is none but if you were to appraise his every word for the past two years, it is obvious that they were just appetisers for the great cuisine to come. And what kind of French exotica…or witches brew is Dr Mahathir concocting?

It’s hard to predict the unpredictability of a man of Dr Mahathir’s intellectual stature. In Japan, he is still treated like a rock star for his brilliant analyses and exhortations of the socio-economic and political enigmas associated with Japanese world dominance, especially their problematic World War II reputation. But this is the man who convinced the Japanese to dump their WWII historical baggage and compete as an equal global entrepreneur on all financial, economic and charitable fronts. You’ve attacked Pearl Harbor, now you go ahead and buy it. That’s why he is a star there.

And now, even as he impels Abdullah into stepping down as Umno president and PM as a long-shot gambit which others perceived as a last-ditch roll of the dice, it would be impudently unwise to think that Dr Mahathir didn’t think this through from all sides before sending in his walking papers. For now, it is safe to assume that his clarion call to resign is actually an appeal to all Umno divisions to decide that on the current scheme of things, an alternative nomination, other than the one expected for Abdullah as president, should be cast to whoever is a legitimate candidate. And it doesn’t matter who as long as he gets past that 30 per cent quota of nominations from 191 divisions.

What happens next? Even if Dr Mahathir smilingly relents and allows his detractors to scan his brain using a MRI or a Vulcan mind-meld, it is hard still to predict, such is the depth of which his visionary mind operates, even when he is no longer Prime Minister. Bottom-line: Dr Mahathir’s ultimate goal is still to rid of Abdullah and if he can’t get him at the Umno elections, he’ll move on and think of something else. In that respect, TIME should have placed him together with Anwar Ibrahim as the TIME 100 most influential inductees for leadership. And who should write the accompanying essay? Why, George Soros, of course...