KUALA LUMPUR, 1 November 2003 — Asia’s longest-serving leader, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, yesterday retired to compliments from around the world and Western silence.
In a somber ceremony at the royal palace following prayers at the national mosque, King Syed Sirajuddin Jamalullail accepted Mahathir’s resignation and swore in his deputy, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, as the country’s fifth prime minister.
The 78-year-old leader of the mainly Muslim Southeast Asian nation spent much of his time rubbing Western governments up the wrong way, while becoming a respected spokesman within the Islamic and developing worlds.
Mahathir went out in typically combative style by raising a controversy earlier this month with comments about Jewish dominance of the world that riled the United States, Australia and much of Europe but made him a hero in the Muslim and Arab world.
“We won’t shed a tear on his leaving,” said Avi Pazner, an Israeli government spokesman, expressing hopes that “our relations with Malaysia will improve now that he’s left.” The US and other Western governments had little to say on a historic day for Malaysia. “The embassy has not received any message from the White House,” said a US Embassy official in Kuala Lumpur.
Others were less harsh in judging Mahathir, who transformed Malaysia from a tin and rubber producing backwater to an industrial powerhouse during 22 years at the helm and brought stability to his multiethnic country. “Ever a complex man, Dr. Mahathir’s energy and vision, but not his prejudices, will be missed,” The Guardian newspaper of London said in an editorial.
The most effusive praise came from Malaysian newspapers. Tributes also flowed in editorials around the world, including Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Singapore. Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, the Arab world’s two most popular television stations, broadcast live Mahathir’s retirement ceremony.
“It will be hard to conceive of a neighborhood without him. Correction — make that a world stage,” said Singapore’s Straits Times.
Indonesia’s Jakarta Post newspaper praised Mahathir for showing the world that it is possible for a non-Western country to manage an orderly succession.
Unwilling to make a concession to Mahathir’s retiree status, Australian Prime Minister John Howard refused to comment when asked if he had a last message for the man whose acerbic tongue has often lashed out against Australia.
“I don’t have any comments to make,” Howard told radio station 3AW, but said the links forged by 200,000 Malaysians educated in Australian universities would be “more productive... than the contribution made by heads of government.”
The Nation newspaper of Thailand said Mahathir’s retirement has left a vacancy for the job of regional statesman but warned that Southeast Asia does not need a Mahathir clone with a “totalitarian bent.” Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is credited with turning around Thailand’s economy in the last two years, has been touted as a replacement for Mahathir. But critics say Thaksin lacks Mahathir’s experience, intelligence and his credentials as a champion of Third World causes.
