Dr M defends his firing of Anwar from Cabinet in 1998

PETALING JAYA: Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has defended his treatment of Pakatan Harapan de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in 1998.

Responding to a question on Facebook live if he had any regrets about the treatment of Anwar, the former prime minister said that he was merely “responding to the situation at hand”.

“But now, it is different,” the Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia chairman said in the interview yesterday with Thai journalist and Nation Multimedia Group chairman Suthichai Yoon.

“If we keep on raking up the past, you can never work with anybody. You will always be fighting against your enemies, and that is bad.

“I’m not angry over the past, he is not angry over the past also,” said Dr Mahathir, who is also Pakatan Harapan chairman.

He also described Anwar as “quite capable” of becoming prime minister, adding that Malaysia’s future premiers “will not be so powerful as the present one”.

In 1998, with Malaysia under Dr Mahathir’s leadership, Anwar, the then deputy prime minister, was fired from the Cabinet.

He was put on trial for corruption and sodomy and later convicted of both before having the sodomy verdict overturned in 2004, when Dr Mahathir’s successor, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, was holding the premiership.

In the same interview, Dr Mahathir exonerated his former “enemy” Lim Kit Siang, claiming that the DAP adviser was “not as bad” as he had made him out to be in the past.

He also indicated that it was all part of a strategy to portray political enemies in a negative light.

“When you are in the government, you have to demonise your opposition,” said Dr Mahathir, adding that Lim is “very much disliked by people of my old party”.

“But people realise that he is not as bad as I made him out to be in the past,” he added.

During Dr Mahathir’s tenure as prime minister in 1987, Lim was arrested under Ops Lalang and spent 17 months in prison without trial under the Internal Security Act (ISA).