Shock as Malaysia elects a 92-year-old as new prime minister
Malaysia’s former authoritarian ruler Mahathir Mohamad, who in a stunning political comeback led opposition parties to their first election victory in six decades, said yesterday they have a clear mandate to form a government and insisted he should be immediately confirmed as prime minister.
In a lively news conference peppered with his trademark wisecracks, 92-year-old Mahathir flagged significant changes for Malaysia, which he described as being left in a “mess” by defeated prime minister Najib Razak and the National Front coalition.
The election result is a political earthquake for the Muslim-majority country, ending the National Front’s unbroken 60-year rule and sweeping aside Najib, whose reputation was tarnished by a monumental corruption scandal, a crackdown on dissent and the imposition of an unpopular sales tax that hurt many of his coalition’s poor rural supporters. It is also a surprising exception to backsliding on democratic values in south-east Asia, a region of more than 600 million people where governments of countries including Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines have swung toward harsh authoritarian rule.
“We need to have this government today without delay,” Mahathir said. “There is a lot of work to be done. You know the mess the country is in and we need to attend to this mess as soon as possible and that means today. So we expect that today, well, I’ll be sworn in as prime minister.”
Supporters of the incoming government took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur to celebrate their unexpected victory. Many analysts had thought the National Front might lose the popular vote but cling to a majority in parliament due to an electoral system that gave more power to its rural Malay supporters.
People stood on roadsides waving the white, blue and red flag of the opposition alliance that triumphed in Wednesday’s election. Cars honked their horns as they sped past.
“I’m so happy,” said Zarini Najibuddin while waving the opposition flag. “I hope we’ll have a better Malaysia now. Malaysia reborn!”
But Ibrahim Suffian, cofounder of the Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research, said the new government will have to contend with “enormous forces of inertia and resistance from within the government elites”.
“The bureaucracy and the rest of the government apparatus has never been used to this idea, having been, you know, more than 60 years under the same political party,” he said.
Mahathir, prime minister for 22 years until stepping down in 2003, was credited with modernizing Malaysia but was also known as a heavyhanded leader who imprisoned opponents and subjugated the courts.