Mahathir: The comeback statesman who rocks

With the exception of a Mahathir studies centre in University Utara Malaysia, which may have been disbanded at the height of Dr Mahathir Mohamad's feisty tussle with Najib Razak, there seems to be no monument or roads to remember Mahathir. This is a novelty in so far as the indulgence of Malaysian VIPs to praise themselves, often affixing their names with YB, Dato, Tan Sri and the likes.

Mahathir seems to be comfortable with people screaming "Mahathir," or "Hidup Mahathir", both online and in actual briefings before and after cabinet meetings. But so far there has been no sign (as yet) that all that adulation has gone to his head. At the very least, he has taken to the new tenure as the seventh prime minister of Malaysia with gusto.

Be it his regular interface with members of the Council of Elders, or, the party’s presidential council, indeed, key members of Bersatu, such as Muhyiddin Yassin, indeed policy strategists like Rais Hussin and youth leader like Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, there has been no stopping Mahathir. He is nothing less than a comeback statesman beyond the talismanic description of former President Bill Clinton as the comeback kid.

But those who have had the privilege of working with Mahathir before ought to know why he is a force unto his own: he is superbly systematic. How?

Before one wants to brief Mahathir on any issues, as I did when he received an honorary doctorate in letters from Waseda University, the first Japanese university to admit former Universiti Malaya chancellor royal professor Ungku Aziz too, invariably the father of Zeti Aziz, one has to brief Mahathir ahead of time.

Meetings with Mahathir can last anything from a simple 10 to 15 minutes, but the follow up from his team is exceptional, especially from secretary like Madam Adzlin or his special assistant Sufi Yusof. Even Badariah Arshad, Mahathir's loyal manager, is excellent in keeping his schedule organised.

When Mahathir was awarded the honorary doctorate in 2006 by Waseda University, it was arranged and done through me, with close coordination with the Department of Political Science and Economics in Waseda University, while the award ceremony would be handled and supported by the Graduate School of Asian Pacific Studies.

The honorary degree itself was in recognition of Mahathir as the 'inspiration' or 'father' of Asian regionalism; which Waseda University fully supports. Unlike Keio University which tends to encourage Japan to Look West, Waseda University has always believed that the future of Japan rests with Asia, ideally a peaceful and prosperous one.

When I made the case for Mahathir to be made the recipient of the Waseda honorary doctorate, I briefed Mahathir that I was a product of Look East too. After my graduate studies at University of Cambridge I had taken to his advice to learn from Japan, at which point, I ended up first in University of Tokyo in 1997 before further stints in the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA), a think-tank embedded in the structure of Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs that is nonetheless independent from it.

Meticulous attention to detail

In my meeting with Mahathir in 2006 at the Petronas Twin Towers, I noticed that his desk was clean and meticulous. Eight years later, when I met Mahathir again at the Perdana Leadership Foundation, to encourage him to build a Look East University, potentially with Albukhary International University as an anchor, I still saw the same meticulous attention to detail. His desk would be supremely well-organised, and in less than five minutes, he would be able to absorb every detail one can explain to him.

Indeed, should Mahathir be needed in any meeting two days later, invariably as a chair of the intended meeting, all that one has to do is to brief him 48 hours before the prospective meeting with the simplest dossier.

Two days later, when Mahathir does chair the meeting, in my case from 9am to 5pm, invariably, on the practicality of a Look East University - which Mahathir endorses and has always agreed, as marked by his recent trip to Japan to encourage more Japanese academic institutions to establish their branches in Malaysia - one will be shocked to know that Mahathir has studied all the materials. But more importantly, Mahathir is capable of throwing more ideas and suggestions on how such Look East endeavours are important.

Unknown to many, Mahathir is adept at chairing meetings that are noisy, full of contradictory views and opinions too. Indeed, Mahathir usually stays away from tea and sweets that are common in many government meetings. Thus, when Mahathir chairs any meetings, he will just go right down to the business, and he allows you to speak too. The more informed and intelligent one is, with facts and numbers, the more one will prevail too.

But, in truth, what Mahathir wants is a strong dose of patriotism. One of the strongest reasons why Mahathir can co-exist with PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim and Pakatan Harapan is their sense of common mission: that Malaysia needs to be saved. If all of them agreed that Asia Pacific needs to be redeemed and made more prosperous too, as is the gut feeling of Mahathir, who is an ardent anti-colonialist, one can get a stronger hearing from him too.

But, as a medical doctor, Mahathir looks for symptoms and solutions. One cannot just focus on the former without offering the latter. At the pre-award ceremony in Waseda, Mahathir also conforms to many Malay adat or customs, such as speaking softly and politely, which led some Japanese to wonder if this was due to his age. I explained to the president and vice-president of Waseda, that this was due to Mahathir's concept of humility. They immediately understood it as a Japanese practice too, and embraced Mahathir as one of their own to this day.

In looking East, Mahathir is not against the West. In fact, Mahathir appreciates the game changer in the form of the investigation of 1MDB by the US Department of Justice.

Like any top doctors, Mahathir believes in following the facts, which is a quality the cabinet seems to have in abundance right now, though it helps when the likes of Rais Hussin, Liew Chin Tong, Ong Kian Ming, Nurul Izzah, Rafizi Ramli, Darryl Leiking, and Dr Mujahid Rawa can all make it to the cabinet too. Under the leadership of their respective party presidents, they all rock - as Mahathir does for Bersatu.

If this Hari Raya provides Malaysians with any sense of hope, it is the fine leadership accumulated in the cabinet, coalition and council of elders, all of which Mahathir and Deputy Prime Minister Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail have galvanised together, with prime minister-in-waiting Anwar patiently urging calm and composure. The latter is key as Mahathir is going after one of the worse kleptocratic regimes the world has ever seen.

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PHAR KIM BENG is a Harvard/Cambridge Commonwealth Fellow, a former Monbusho scholar at the University of Tokyo and visiting scholar at Waseda University. -Mkini