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.