What a handshake between Mahathir and Anwar really means for Malaysia

Two years ago, Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister of Malaysia, visited Hong Kong. At the time, the Umbrella Movement was in full swing. Mahathir had been invited to address a pro-establishment gathering of political figures and business elites at the convention centre in Wan Chai. Few in the audience seemed to know much about Malaysia. But they knew about Mahathir. And in appreciating the managerial fist that he had wielded during his long tenure, they paid high fees to come and take heart.

Mahathir didn’t disappoint. Though 90 years old, he held the floor for an hour, without notes or nary a stumble. His central theme was that mainland China, in contrast to the meddlesome West, was beneficent and nobly intentioned, with Malaysia uplifted by its investment. The audience nodded on in agreement. But what they really wanted to learn from Mahathir was how to stamp out the Umbrella Movement.

So, during the Q&A, local notables clamoured for the mike. A loyalist member of Legco implored, “Can you give us some of your precious advice?” Mahathir pursed his lips, then sagely intoned, “the best way to handle it is to handle it before the occupying” – intimating that Hong Kong’s police had been tardy and soft. At this, Mahathir was thunderously applauded. A Malaysian guest at my side thumped the table top. “I’d like to bring the Malaysian police in here,” he growled. “They’d teach these kids something.”

Today Mahathir remains an opinion leader in Malaysia. But he is now dispensing different advice. While prime minister, Mahathir regularly ordered the arrest of opposition leaders and activists whom he accused of wanting to “topple the government” – a record that his Hong Kong audience warmly recalled. But now in opposition himself, Mahathir courts his own arrest while trying to topple the government of the current prime minister, Najib Razak.

Mahathir loudly demands that Najib resign, citing the money laundering scandal over Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund 1MDB. He has quit the party that Najib leads, the United Malays National Organisation (Umno). He has applied to register a new opposition vehicle. And he is the patron of the Citizens’ Declaration and the Save Malaysia Movement, a broad social coalition that through rallies, town hall meetings and a nationwide signature campaign, is pressuring for Najib’s ousting.