Putrajaya, Malaysia – When Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad turned 100 earlier this yr, he marked his birthday by following a lifelong routine of self-discipline: he ate little, labored lots, and didn’t succumb to the lure of relaxation.
“The primary factor is that I work on a regular basis. I don’t relaxation myself,” Mahathir informed Al Jazeera.
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“I’m all the time utilizing my thoughts and physique. Hold your thoughts and physique lively, then you definitely dwell longer,” he mentioned.
From a desk at his workplace in Putrajaya metropolis, south of the capital, Kuala Lumpur, he spent his centenary like most days: penning his ideas on the Malaysian financial system, the nation’s political scenario and unfolding world occasions, notably the scenario in Gaza.
Sitting down with Al Jazeera for an interview after recovering from a spell of exhaustion across the time of his birthday, Mahathir predicted that Israel’s ruthlessness towards the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza can be etched into world historical past.
Israel’s killing of almost 66,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the bulk ladies and kids, shall be remembered for generations, probably for “centuries”, Mahathir mentioned.
“Gaza is horrible. They killed pregnant moms… infants simply born, younger individuals, girls and boys, women and men, the sick and the poor… How can this be forgotten?” he requested.
“It is not going to be forgotten for perhaps centuries,” Mahathir mentioned.
Describing the conflict in Gaza as a genocide that parallelled the killing of Muslims in the course of the conflict in Bosnia within the early Nineteen Nineties and the Jews by Nazi Germany throughout World Conflict II, Mahathir mentioned he was confounded that the individuals of Israel, who had skilled genocide, may, in flip, perpetrate a genocide.
“I believed individuals who suffered like that may not wish to go to it on different individuals,” he mentioned. Victims of a genocide ought to “not wish to want their destiny to befall different individuals”.
Nevertheless, within the case of Israel, he was mistaken, he mentioned.
On the top of his energy within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, Mahathir earned a popularity on the world stage as an outspoken voice for the International South, and a vocal critic of Western imperialism and its modern exploitation of creating international locations by means of flows of monetary capital.
A staunch and lifelong supporter of the Palestinian trigger, Mahathir was additionally roundly criticised for making “anti-Semitic” statements alongside his tirades towards the West, notably the USA.
However, as he informed Al Jazeera, he had sympathised deeply with the Jewish individuals when the horrors of the Nazis grew to become recognized after World Conflict II.
Israelis, he now says, “didn’t study something from their expertise”.
“They need the identical factor that occurred to them, they wish to do it to the Arabs,” he mentioned.
Now, the one “affordable” method to handle the battle between Israel and the Palestinian individuals is to implement a two-state answer, he added. However Mahathir mentioned that such an answer – which obtained a significant increase when Palestinian statehood was lately recognised by Australia, Belgium, Canada, France and the UK, amongst different international locations – remains to be a really good distance off, and he wouldn’t dwell to see it.
“In my lifetime, no. Too brief a time,” he mentioned.
China: ‘Primary nation on the planet’
A survivor of three coronary heart assaults who pulled off a surprising political comeback in Malaysian public life when he was over 90 years of age, Mahathir held energy for a mixed complete of 24 years, and earned himself what’s prone to be the unassailable title as Malaysia’s longest-serving chief.
When he was born on July 10, 1925, within the northern Malaysian state of Kedah, the king of England was George V, the grandfather of the late Queen Elizabeth II, and Malaysia was a British colony referred to as Malaya.
He entered politics within the Nineteen Sixties and have become prime minister from 1981 to 2003 earlier than stepping down, for the primary time.
He then made an astonishing return to energy in 2018, when he led a coalition of opposition events to beat the long-governing Barisan Nasional get together to be re-elected prime minister on the sprightly age of 92, turning into the world’s oldest chief in consequence.
However he stepped down beneath a cloud for the final time in 2020 after shedding help as a consequence of political machinations from inside his personal political get together, Bersatu.
A medical physician by coaching, even Mahathir’s critics acknowledged that he laid the financial foundations that remodeled Malaysia’s agricultural financial system of the Nineteen Sixties into the trendy industrialised state of at present, with the enduring twin Petronas Towers crowning the skyline of its thriving trendy capital metropolis, Kuala Lumpur.
Regardless of having lived previous the age when most politicians would have retreated from the highlight, Mahathir at 100 stays as vocal, sharp and acerbic as ever.
He additionally had some shocking recollections of a bygone China and predictions about the way forward for the USA to share.
Amongst his prized recollections are his impressions of visiting China within the Seventies, when it was “very poor” and there have been few vehicles on the streets.
Being Malaysia’s deputy prime minister on the time, authorities in Beijing rolled out the crimson carpet and their “Pink Flag” mannequin automotive to chauffeur him round, he mentioned.
“It was a really huge Chinese language automotive which China produced themselves. They referred to as it The Pink Flag,” Mahathir mentioned, recounting how that car was among the many first to be independently produced by the Chinese language.
Quick ahead to at present, China’s financial system has come a really good distance, and so too has its thriving automotive business, which is giving Western-produced vehicles a run for his or her cash, notably with electrical autos.
China’s surpassing of the US to turn into the “primary nation on the planet” is inevitable, he mentioned, as a consequence of its big home market and hard-working inhabitants.
“It can take China 10 years to meet up with America. After that, China will overtake America,” Mahathir mentioned.
“China by itself is greater than Europe and America. It’s an enormous market. It’s fairly wealthy. And Chinese language individuals are very sensible in enterprise,” he mentioned, recounting how, as a youth, he witnessed new Chinese language migrants to Malaysia tackle “very heavy work” to earn a dwelling. Inside a technology or two, these households had managed to enhance their lives, give their youngsters a superb schooling, and a few of their grandchildren had gone on to turn into fairly rich.
‘America will be unable to compete with the remainder of the world’
Contrasting modern China with the US beneath the presidency of Donald Trump, Mahathir mentioned that Trump’s “tariff conflict” was “very damaging”, and his plans to convey manufacturing again to the US would improve prices and pave the way in which for China’s additional rise.
“[Trump] desires firms to shift their factories to America. The wages are very excessive there. The work angle there shall be very completely different from Chinese language employees, who can keep for hours and do the work,” he mentioned.
“American employees can’t do this. Something produced in America sooner or later, in the event that they do transfer the factories there, shall be expensive,” he added.
“America will be unable to compete with the remainder of the world.”
Importantly, Trump doesn’t have the time to comply with by means of on his promised financial imaginative and prescient, as it will take a minimal of three to eight years to maneuver manufacturing amenities to the US, he mentioned.
“And Trump is not going to be president any extra after three years,” he added.
Regardless of being 100 years previous , Mahathir walks unaided, workouts day by day, goes to work on daily basis and receives guests.
He makes use of social media and travels exterior of Malaysia every time he receives invites to be a visitor speaker.
The important thing to longevity, Mahathir mentioned, is to remain bodily and mentally lively and never overeat .
“Don’t eat a lot,” he informed Al Jazeera.
“My mom’s greatest recommendation to me was, ‘When the meals tastes good, cease consuming.’”
