Mahathir admits mistakes, no regrets after 20 years

Mahathir admits mistakes, no regrets after 20 years

KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad racked up 20 years in power on Monday, while over 30
countrymen waited to be charged for protesting outside a
detention camp where leading opposition activists are being held.

The milestone puts 75-year-old Mahathir in the same longevity
club as Cuba's Fidel Castro and a clutch of African leaders.
Asia's longest-serving elected leader has discouraged
celebrations of his two decades in power, and there was little
comment on the anniversary by the pro-government mainstream
press.

"I hope Malaysia will remain stable and grow strongly,"
Mahathir said at seminar on the power industry on Monday.

Strong growth and stability were hallmarks of his rule until
1998, when the Asian crisis struck and his deputy Anwar Ibrahim
was jailed.

The former finance minister, popular among Muslim Malays, is
serving a 15-year jail term on sex and graft charges he says were
cooked up to thwart his challenge to Mahathir.

Mahathir is the last survivor of a formidable generation of
Southeast Asian strongmen, which included Singapore's Lee Kuan
Yew, Indonesia's Soeharto and the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos.

Mahathir said while he may have made some mistakes during his
rule, he had acted for the good of the country.

"I think I may have made some mistakes, but I can't regret the
decisions that I have made although they may have been unpopular,
because they lost support," Mahathir said.

"But I believe I did those things for the good of the country,
and not for my own (good), because I'm going anyway. I can't stay
forever."

Columnist Karim Raslan told Reuters the dearth of newspaper
comment might be because Mahathir realizes his popularity ranking
is too low to warrant creating a jubilee. A jovial Mahathir
appeared to share similar misgivings with journalists.

"If you didn't remind me, I would probably have forgotten. If
you talk too much about it people might feel you've been around
too long," he commented on the significance of the anniversary.

The only eulogy appeared in the New Straits Times.
"There are those who (would) like to see him leave the political
scene, but there are also an equal if not greater number who want
him to continue leading the country," it said.

More arrest

Mahathir has frequently pointed at the political chaos in
neighbors such as Indonesia and the Philippines to justify
crackdowns on opponents.

On Sunday, riot police with water cannon broke up a
demonstration outside a detention camp in central Malaysia by
about 500 people protesting against the use of a tough security
law to lock up six Anwar supporters without trial.

Thirty-seven people pleaded not guilty on Monday to illegal
assembly charges stemming from their arrest at a protest outside
a prison camp where six opposition activists and leaders are
being held without trial.

The defendants were among 41 people arrested in Sunday's
protest. Four juveniles were released without charges.

The 37 who were charged were told to pay 1,000 ringgit ($262)
bail and were slowly being released Monday, said Badarudin
Ismail, an activist with the Malaysian human-rights group,
Suaram.

Police sprayed the 500 protesters with chemically laced water
and charged the crowd with batons on Sunday outside the Kamunting
camp, some 250 kilometers north of Kuala Lumpur, where the six
opposition figures are being held under the Internal Security
Act.

"This is a new culture -- you have to protest against
everything. We find universities these days no longer function as
universities," Mahathir said of the latest protest.

Mahathir has said the November 1999 election was his last. The
next election is due in 2004 but he has given no hint when he
will stand down.

He is struggling to regain the popularity he enjoyed before
Anwar was jailed. The opposition is banded around an increasingly
bold Islamic party, Parti Islam se-Malaysia, which spreads its
message through mosques and quasi-religious lectures.