Serious After 18 years, why is Mahathir apologising to Anwar?

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

No one was expecting an apology from Mahathir Mohamad to Anwar Ibrahim at all.

When Mahathir first showed up at the trial of Anwar in September 2016, in the latter’s legal challenge against Malaysia’s National Security Council Act – legislation that empowers any incumbent prime minister to suspend the electoral process – eyebrows were raised.

Tongues were wagging that Mahathir would make amends for firing his one-time deputy when he was prime minister.

But days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. Nothing came. Mahathir still refused to express contrition.

To the surprise of many, the former Malaysian prime minister recently conceded to The Guardian in London that he had “governed Malaysia far longer than needed”, leading the way for two subsequent prime ministers who appeared to be clueless about how to transform Malaysia.

n fact, they had made the country worse than when he left power in October 2002.

Abdullah Badawi, who ruled from 2003 to 2008, was famous for dozing off half an hour into any meeting, a problem which the former premier confessed to have shared with Mahathir prior to his appointment as the fifth prime minister.

Najib Razak, the sixth and current prime minister, has in turn been incessantly bogged down by the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal since 2009, with the repercussions still reverberating across the country.

Mahathir said he had erred, and that Anwar, whom he sacked in 1999 as his deputy prime minister – at the height of the Asian financial crisis – should have been allowed to become the fifth prime minister.

The former leader went so far as to say that if Anwar were pardoned by the king – Anwar is currently serving a five-year prison term for a sodomy conviction many believe is politically motivated – he would support him as the next prime minister.

His expression of remorse, both at the manner by which Anwar had been “unfairly treated”, was not merely an effort to ingratiate himself with the opposition front, now led by Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah. It was also a candid recognition of the relative strength and power of the opposition. (Although Mahathir, upon arrival in Kuala Lumpur on Friday, said that what is “past is past” – that there was no need to frame his interview with The Guardian as an admission of guilt in any form – it was clear that he had shown deep regret.)

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