For a few seconds on Thursday, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad looked his age.
The 93-year-old former and current prime minister of Malaysia wobbled a bit as he clasped the railing, cautiously mounted the four stairs leading to the stage in the bowels of New York’s Asia Society and shuffled over to the podium.
Then Mahathir, called a strongman by his critics so often that he has a joke ready about it, faced the packed auditorium. He smiled broadly and began talking. And the years, maybe even a decade or two, seemed to melt away.
First came the speech: 20 minutes without a single note, relying on the wealth of experience that led one audience member to address him as “the elder statesman of Asia — actually, the elder statesman of the planet.”
When Mahathir was done, the moderator, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, appeared stunned.
He called it a “bravura performance” from the “patron saint of political comebacks,” a man who was premier for 22 years until he retired in 2003 and has now been yanked — willingly — back into the spotlight.
However, Mahathir had only just begun.
Mahathir, attending the UN General Assembly this week as Malaysia’s leader for the first time in nearly a generation, cracked jokes that drew genuine belly laughs from the capacity audience.
He rattled off figures related to debt and spending, and demonstrated a fluency with government and international policies that dates back decades.
After more than an hour of back and forth with the audience, he looked disappointed that it had ended. His demeanor was that of a man who relished returning to a job he never expected to have again.
Asked about his physical and political stamina, he said: “I don’t really know.”
He acknowledged two heart operations and the occasional cough, adding: “But I have my doctor following me everywhere I go.”
All the while, he tapped into a deep vein of knowledge and experience won from being a high-level political player in Asia and the world for the past seven decades.
Although he dodged the occasional thorny topic — a question about gay rights and child marriage in Malaysia, for instance — he deftly handled almost everything thrown at him.
He talked about what it was like for countries other than China and the US to be caught in the middle of the behemoths’ growing trade war — uncomfortable.
He spoke of the absolute necessity of free sea passage, so that Malaysia can pursue its trading lifeblood, and of the region’s disputes with China over control of the South China Sea.
Asked about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hallmark Belt and Road Initiative to build ports, highways and other trade-related infrastructure, Mahathir said that he long ago suggested the railway part of it.
He had proposed that Beijing build a railway line with bigger from China to the West, Mahathir said: “The idea is not new to us.”
He made a smattering of quips on what he said was the previous government’s slogan, “Cash is King.”
It’s “practically admitting to the world that bribery is OK,” he said.
Asked whether Malaysia would one day allow dual citizenship, he said: “Well, we think you should make up your mind.”
He focused on Malaysia’s corruption problem, which he almost entirely blamed on the government that he drove from power in May.
Mahathir’s designated successor, People’s Justice Party leader Anwar Ibrahim, and him put aside their 20-year-old political feud to help their alliance win those elections.
Mahathir rose again to prime minister amid anger over a massive corruption scandal involving the 1Malaysia Development Bhd state fund, which is under investigation in the US and other countries for allegations of cross-border embezzlement and money laundering.
Former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, 65, has accused Mahathir’s government of seeking political vengeance.
When Rudd asked impishly about when the next elections would be, Mahathir seemed almost wistful. he said: “Five years from now.”
However, this time — the man who has lived through nearly a century hastened to add — he plans to retire for good.
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