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What Does Malaysia Owe to Mahathir Mohamad?
The smart tactics of the longest-serving democratically elected prime minister of Southeast Asia
Mahathir Mohamad was Malaysia’s fourth prime minister from 1981 to 2003. Once more, he was re-elected in 2018 at the age of 93 to fix the corrupted Malaysian political life. The country’s unparalleled growth during the last decades is mostly the merit of Mahathir Mohamad, “the Father of Modernization”.
His achievements in the country’s history are undisputed, however, he got many critics for his autocratic style of exercising power. He imprisoned his political opponents, manipulated the different ethnicities, and silenced the media.
He retreated as prime minister at the end of 2003 but remained a vital player in politics from the background. With the resignation of Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s most successful 22-year history had ended. The country’s economic development kept pace with even that of Singapore. At the end of his term, the then 77-year-old prime minister — who looked more like somebody in his early sixties — has made the country of the Malays, described as one of the laziest nations in British territory, the 27th super-tech industrial power in the world in two decades.
