A favourite foe in political obscurity by Michael Backman The Age November 2, 2005 I MET Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's former prime minister, the weekend before last at his private residence just outside Kuala Lumpur. It was an unexpected meeting; it occurred not at my request but at Dr Mahathir's. I'd been warned Mahathir would take a while to warm up. He might be fiery, abrupt, and difficult. None of that would be out of step with his public image. Yet he could not have been more open and engaging. He was mild mannered, charming even and proved a great interlocutor. It was another side of this complex and thoughtful figure of history. Now 80, he has the looks and stamina of a 60-year-old. And he's tough. It is Ramadan and he was fasting; meaning no food or drink during sunlight hours. And yet he'd been horse riding that morning and at four in the afternoon showed no sign of fading. His house is in a gated residential area. It is comfortable and not particularly large; certainly it's no mansion. Probably he is one of Asia's poorest ex-leaders; which says a great deal about the man and how he ruled Malaysia. Only one household staff member was visible. And a solitary police box stands outside the gate. It did not seem to be manned. Only the day before I'd been asked at a conference to confirm that Mahathir still pulled the strings in the way that Lee Kuan Yew continues to in Singapore. But this is not the case. It helps to demonstrate the degree to which Malaysia is a functioning parliamentary democracy compared with some of its neighbours. When Mahathir left office, he left power; something Singapore's leaders have so far not done. He told me he had seen the new prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, only twice since Abdullah came to office in late 2003. The first occasion was before last year's elections. Abdullah came to see Mahathir to ask whether any of Mahathir's children wanted to stand. If any did, a seat would be found for them. But Mahathir said no. He was the politician in the family; it was not his intention to found a political dynasty. On the second occasion, Abdullah wanted to brief the former prime minister on government policy. Mahathir told me that he simply listened and stayed quiet. We talked about Anwar, the former deputy prime minister who fell out with Mahathir and who was subsequently jailed on abuse of power and sodomy charges. I asked Mahathir if he felt it was appropriate for sodomy to be an offence in a country with modern pretensions like Malaysia. Malaysia was a conservative society but his main concern, which has largely gone unreported, was that, if the allegations about Anwar were true, he was unfit to be prime minister not so much because of the moral issue but because Anwar would have been open to blackmail threats. So, for Mahathir, Anwar's alleged behaviour might have led to private moral concerns but the larger concern related to security. Anwar, who has since been cleared of the sodomy charges by Malaysia's Federal Court, had repeatedly asked to see him since being let of jail, Mahathir said. But Mahathir feels the Malay community would see any such meeting as a rapprochement, an impression he does not want to give. I asked Mahathir why he was always so aggressive towards the West, particularly Australia. He explained that the Malays had peacefully traded with the Arabs and the Chinese for a thousand years and that the latter had come to the Malay peninsular in trading vessels. But when the Europeans arrived, they did so in warships. They did not want to trade but to take control. He feels that vestiges of this attitude survive today. He cited John Howard's claim that Australia would act as a sheriff in Asia as an example. Mahathir refused to visit Australia as prime minister but made a private visit with his wife to Melbourne several weeks ago to visit a granddaughter who is studying in Melbourne. He and his wife went shopping (unescorted) at Prahran Market. Several tourists posed with the couple for photographs and one local who recognised him walked past and said: "I hope the Australians are treating you better than you treated Anwar." Mahathir seems to have enjoyed the encounter. Has he made mistakes? Of course, Mahathir replied, he had; but not knowingly. Mistakes are only clear after the event. And his biggest regret? That he was unable to do more to make Malays more entrepreneurial and less reliant on handouts and favours. Still, Malaysia is prosperous and peaceful. The race-based preferment that Mahathir introduced did sever the link once and for all between great wealth and Chineseness, thus giving Malays their own heroes in the business community. There has been a lot of waste and inefficiency along the way. But it has been a small price to pay for the social cohesion that Malaysia now enjoys. Chauvinistic communalism has been replaced by multiculturalism and today, the three main races in Malaysia — the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians — have one thing in common: they all think of themselves first and foremost as Malaysians. And for that, Mahathir can feel justly proud. ends