Leadership in the West is crumbling, says former prime minister of Malaysia Dr Mahathir Mohamad, pointing to frayed relations within the European Union and the upcoming US elections.
Speaking live over Zoom at Nutanix's ASEAN CIO Virtual Summit, Mahathir criticised the US’ increasing isolationism, enacted under President Donald Trump.
“We see leadership quality in the West crumbling, almost. That is why we see they are in big trouble. The Europeans don't think they are the Europeans of before. They are now going back to the idea of their own nationalities,” said Mahathir.
“They don’t think they should make sacrifices in order to sustain their unity. All these things have changed, their ideas have changed after they became a union.”
On the US, Mahathir noted how its leadership has changed for the worse. “What they do in the US affects us. We find that whether we like it or not, the thing is that their leadership quality has changed. I would say deteriorated.”
“The very things we used to accuse developing countries of doing, now it is being done in the US — to be isolationist, to think only about their greatness, to think they can be great in a world that is not great; all these things are wrong. The world must be great before you can be great. You can’t be great on your own and leave the world behind. That is not going to happen.”
At 95, Malaysia’s seventh PM, who abruptly resigned in February, is one of the oldest politicians still active today. Previously, Anwar Ibrahim had been tipped to take over from Mahathir after the Pakatan Harapan coalition defeated Barisan Nasional in the 2018 general election.
Mahathir’s shock exit ended the succession plans, which had been a significant source of tension within the factions of the coalition. Support from the then-opposition coalition then rallied behind current PM Muhyiddin Yassin.
Hours after teasing a “big announcement” on September 23, Anwar announced that he has garnered a "strong, formidable, convincing majority" of members of parliament to form a new Malaysia government, adding that the current government led by Muhyiddin has fallen.
Asked about Anwar before his press conference, Mahathir commented that this is “not the first time” his former deputy has claimed that he has majority support and will be making a very important announcement, referencing a similar situation in Sept 2008.
“We will have to wait to see if this is another episode of making claims that cannot be substantiated.”
On the conference’s topic of ‘Disruptor or Disrupted?’, Mahathir insists that the resignation — which effectively ended the coalition that ushered in the first regime change in Malaysia’s history — was not his decision.
“I didn’t want to resign as PM, but when my party pulled out from the coalition, the coalition fell, so I ceased to be the Prime Minister. So these things happen without me initiating anything by my own. Now I have to handle this problem, not finishing my term, not being able to implement all the ideas that I have for recovery. That is very disruptive in many ways,” he says.
“I am disrupted. I also disrupt a lot of people. I want to change things,” he adds. “Things were not going well in Malaysia for some time because we have a problem with a leader who has not really focused on the work he has to do so we had to move him out.”
“Our country was doing well but it became concerned with a lot of wrong things being done. The correction [will take] a long time and you have to be very careful about what you do to correct all the mistakes that were done before.”
