WORLD’S ELDEST STATESMAN REGALES INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCE WITH ACUITY GAINED OVER 93 YEARS
NEW YORK— The 93-year-old Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad wobbled a bit as he walked to the podium at the Manhattan headquarters of the Asia Society.
But the years, maybe even a decade or two, seemed to melt away as he started to speak before a packed auditorium and regaled the audience with the acuity of the world’s eldest statesman.
Still keen
He delivered a 20-minute speech without notes, cracked jokes that drew genuine laughter, converted currencies on the fly and rattled off figures that showed his fluency with government and international policies that date back decades.
The forum’s moderator, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, seemed stunned and he called it a “bravura per- formance” from the “patron saint of political comebacks,” a man who had been premier for 22 years until he retired in 2003.
Back in the global spotlight
But Mahathir , who had been yanked—willingly—back into the spotlight, had only just begun.
Mahathir, attending the UN General Assembly this week as Malaysia’s leader for the first time in nearly a generation, answered questions from his international audience with ease.
After more than an hour of back and forth with the audience, he looked disappointed that it had ended.
Asked about his physical and political stamina, he said: “I don’t really know.” He acknowledged two heart operations and the occasional cough, “but I have my doctor following me everywhere I go.”
All the while, he tapped into a deep vein of knowledge and experience won from being a high-level political player in Asia and the world for the last seven decades.
Deft answers
Though he dodged the occasional thorny topic—a question about gay rights and child marriage in Malaysia, for instance—he deftly handled almost everything thrown at him.
He talked about what it was like for countries other than China and the United States to be caught in the middle of the behemoths’ growing trade war.
He spoke of the absolute ne- cessity of free sea passage so that Malaysia can pursue its trading lifeblood, and of the region’s disputes with China over control of the South China Sea.
His remarks were peppered with jokes. The funniest one—“I have been known as a dictator, but I don’t think any dictator would have resigned”—was so good he used it twice.
But unlike a lot of politician’s attempts at humor, they worked repeatedly.
Quotable quotes
A smattering of his quips: On what he said was the previous government’s slogan, “Cash is King”: It’s “practically admitting to the world that bribery is OK.”
On US President Donald Trump: “We are still trying to figure out what is it that the president of the United States wants, because sometimes he changes his mind three times a day.”
On whether Malaysia would one day allow dual citizenship: “Well, we think you should make up your mind.”
He focused on Malaysia’s corruption problem, which he almost entirely blamed on the government that he drove from power in May.
Mahathir’s designated successor, Anwar Ibrahim, and Mahathir put aside their 20-yearold political feud to help their alliance win those elections.
Resolved to retire
When Rudd asked impishly about when the next elections would be, Mahathir seemed almost wistful. He smiled and said, “five years from now.”
But this time, the man who has lived through nearly a century hastened to add, he plans to retire for good.—
Weare still trying to figure out what is it that the president of the United States wants, because sometimes he changes his mind three times a day Mahathir Mohamad Malaysian prime minister