PORT MORESBY, 26 October 2003 — Outspoken Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told Australian politicians yesterday that they were too fond of making unwelcome remarks and should not assume they know everything.
The peppery 78-year-old Malaysian leader was talking to reporters in the Papua New Guinea capital Port Moresby at the end of a two-day visit to the resource-rich but troubled Pacific nation aimed at boosting trade between the two countries.
“We have fairly good relationships with Australia but Australian politicians are very fond of passing unwelcome remarks and that of course strikes us wrongly and we respond likewise,” he told reporters at a joint press conference with Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare.
At a dinner in Mahathir’s honor on Friday night Somare had praised him as the “spokesman of the underdogs of the world.”
“They seem to assume that we do not know how to run our country, and that they know better...we are all sinners, there is no perfect man, don’t go around assuming that you know everything and other people don’t know anything,” Mahathir said.
Mahathir, who steps down at the end of the month after 22 years in power, has been unrepentant after provoking an outcry when he told an Islamic summit last week the Jewish people had an influence in the world that far outweighed their numbers.
Throughout his long career he has often taken a verbal swipe at rich nations and the West, and recently told Australian Prime Minister John Howard that he should stop acting as a regional bully and concentrate on his own domestic racial problems before meddling in others’ affairs.
Mahathir signed a pact to increase bilateral relations.
