Mahathir Mohamad From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This is a Malay name; the name Mohamad is a patronymic, not

a family name, and the person should be referred to by the given name, Mahathir. Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad (pronounced [mahadr bn mohamat]), (born 10 July 1925) is a Malaysian politician who was the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia. He held the post for 22 years from 1981 to 2003, making him Malaysia's longest serving Prime Minister. His political career spanned almost 40 years. Born and raised in Alor Setar, Kedah, Mahathir excelled at school and became a medical doctor. He became active in the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), Malaysia's largest political party, before entering parliament in 1964. He served one term before losing his seat, before falling out with the then Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman and being expelled from UMNO. When Abdul Rahman resigned, Mahathir re-entered UMNO and parliament, and was promoted to the Cabinet. By 1976, he had risen to Deputy Prime Minister, and in 1981 was sworn in as Prime Minister after the resignation of his predecessor, Hussein Onn. As Prime Minister, Mahathir was credited with engineering Malaysia's rapid modernisation and economic growth, and initiated a series of bold infrastructure projects. He was a dominant political figure, winning five consecutive general elections and seeing off all of his rivals for the leadership of UMNO. However, his accumulation of power came at the expense of the independence of the judiciary and the traditional powers and privileges of Malaysia's royalty. He also deployed the controversial Internal Security Act to detain activists, non-mainstream religious figures, and political opponents including his sacked deputy, Anwar Ibrahim. Mahathir's record of curbing civil liberties and his antagonism to western diplomatic interests and economic policy made his relationships with the likes of the US, Britain and Australia difficult. As Prime Minister, he was an advocate of thirdworld development and a prominent international activist for causes such as the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and the interests of Bosnians in the 1990s Balkans conflict. He remains an active political figure in his retirement, having become a strident critic of his handpicked successor, Abdullah Badawi, and actively supporting Abdullah's replacement by Najib Razak. Childhood and medical career Mahathir was born at his parents' home in a poor neighbourhood of Alor Setar, the capital of the state of Kedah, British Malaya, on 10 July 1925.[1][N 1] His father, Mohamad, was of mixed Malay and Malayalee descent; his mother, Wan Tempawan, was Malay. Mahathir's non-Malay ancestry is a feature shared by Malaysia's six prime ministers. But another aspect of Mahathir's birth set him apart from the other five: he was not born into the aristocracy or a prominent religious or political family.[2][N 2] Mohamad was a school principal whose low socio-economic status meant his

daughters were unable to enrol in secondary school, while Wan Tempawan had only distant relations to members of Kedah's royalty. Both had been married previously; Mahathir was born with six halfsiblings and two full-siblings.[3] Mahathir was a hard-working school student. Discipline imposed by his father motivated him to study, and he showed little interest in sports. He won a position in a selective English medium secondary school, having become fluent in English well ahead of his primary school peers.[6] With schools closed during the Japanese occupation of Malaya in World War II, he went into small business, first selling coffee and later pisang goreng(banana fritters) and other snacks.[1] After the war, he graduated from secondary school with high marks and enrolled to study medicine at the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore.[7] In college he met his future wife, Siti Hasmah Mohamad Ali, a fellow medical student. After Mahathir graduated, he worked as a doctor in government service before marrying Siti Hasmah in 1956 and returning to Alor Setar the following year to set up his own practice. He was the town's first Malay doctor, and a successful one. He built a large house, invested in various businesses, and employed a Chinese man to chauffeur him in his Pontiac Catalina (most chauffeurs at the time were Malay).[8][9] He and Siti Hasmah had their first child, Marina, in 1957, before conceiving three others and adopting three more over the following 28 years [10] Early political career Mahathir had been politically active since the end of the war, where he joined protests against the granting of citizenship to non-Malays under the short-lived Malayan Union.[11] He later argued for affirmative action for Malays at medical college. While at college he contributed to The Straits Times under the pseudonym "C.H.E. Det", and a student journal, in which he fiercely promoted Malay rights, such as restoring Malay as an official language.[12] While practising as a doctor in Alor Setar, Mahathir became active in UMNO; by the time of the first general election for the independent state of Malaya in 1959, he was the chairman of the party in Kedah.[13] Despite his prominence in UMNO, Mahathir was not a candidate in the 1959 election, ruling himself out following a disagreement with then Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman. The relationship between the two Kedahans had been strained since Mahathir had criticised Abdul Rahman's agreement to the retention of British andCommonwealth forces in Malaya after independence. Now Abdul Rahman opposed Mahathir's plans to introduce minimum educational qualifications for UMNO candidates. For Mahathir this was a significant enough slight to delay his entry into national politics in protest. The delay did not last for long. In the following general election in 1964, he was elected as the federal parliamentarian for the Alor Setar-based seat of Kota Setar Selatan.[14] Elected to parliament in a volatile political period, Mahathir, as a government backbencher, launched himself into the main conflict of the day: the future of Singapore, with its large and economically powerful ethnic Chinese population, as a state of Malaysia. He vociferously attacked Singapore's dominant People's Action Party for being "pro-Chinese" and "anti-Malay" and called its leader, Lee

Kuan Yew, "arrogant". Singapore was expelled from Malaysia in Mahathir's first full year in parliament.[14][15] However, despite Mahathir's prominence as a backbencher, he lost his seat in the 1969 election, defeated by Yusof Rawa of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS).[16] Mahathir attributed the loss of his seat to ethnic Chinese voters switching support from UMNO to PAS (being a Malay-dominated seat, only the two major Malay parties fielded candidates, leaving Chinese voters to choose between the Malay-centric UMNO and the Islamist PAS).[17] Large government losses in the election were followed by the race riots of 13 May 1969, in which hundreds of people were killed in clashes between Malays and Chinese. The previous year, Mahathir had predicted the outbreak of racial hostility. Now, outside parliament, he openly criticised the government, sending a letter to Abdul Rahman in which the prime minister was criticised for failing to uphold Malay interests. The letter, which soon became public, called for Abdul Rahman's resignation.[18] By the end of the year, Mahathir had been sacked from UMNO's Supreme Council and expelled from the party; Abdul Rahman had to be persuaded not to have him arrested.[16][17] While in the political wilderness, Mahathir wrote his first book, The Malay Dilemma, in which he set out his vision for the Malay community. The book argued that a balance had to be achieved between enough government support for Malays so that their economic interests would not be dominated by the Chinese, and exposing Malays to sufficient competition to ensure that over time, Malays would lose what Mahathir saw as the characteristics of avoiding hard work and failing to "appreciate the real value of money and property".[19] The book continued Mahathir's criticism of Abdul Rahman's government, and it was promptly banned. The ban was only lifted after Mahathir became prime minister in 1981; he thus served as a minister and deputy prime minister while being the author of a banned book.[16][20] Academics R. S. Milne and Diane K. Mauzy argue that Mahathir's relentless attacks were the principal cause of Abdul Rahman's downfall and subsequent resignation as prime minister in 1970.[21] Domestic affairs Mahathir was sworn in as Prime Minister on 16 July 1981, at the age of 56.[29] One of his first acts was to release 21 detainees held under the Internal Security Act, including journalist Samad Ismailand a former deputy minister in Hussein's government, Abdullah Ahmad, who had been suspected of being an underground communist.[30] Otherwise, he approached his first two years in the job with caution, knowing that he still had many enemies within his own party.[29] He appointed his close ally, Musa Hitam, as Deputy Prime Minister.[31] Retirement

Mahathir speaking at the United Nations

On his retirement, Mahathir was named a Grand Commander of the Order of the Defender of the Realm, allowing him to adopt the title of "Tun".[95] He pledged to leave politics "completely", rejecting an emeritus role in Abdullah's cabinet.[96] Abdullah immediately made his mark as a quieter and less adversarial premier. With much stronger religious credentials than Mahathir, he was able to beat back PAS's surge in the 1999 election, and lead the Barisan Nasional in the 2004 election to its biggest win ever, taking 199 of 219 parliamentary seats.[97] Mahathir became an adviser to flagship Malaysian companies, such as Proton and the oil company Petronas.[98] Mahathir and Abdullah had a major fallout over Proton in 2005. Proton's chief executive, a Mahathir ally, had been sacked by the company's board. With Abdullah's blessing, the company then sold one of the company's prize assets, the motorcycle company MV Agusta, which was bought on Mahathir's advice.[99] Mahathir also criticised the awarding of import permits for foreign cars, which he claimed were causing Proton's domestic sales to suffer,[100] and attacked Abdullah for cancelling the construction of a second causeway between Malaysia and Singapore.[101] Mahathir complained that his views were not getting sufficient airing by the Malaysian press, the freedom of which he had curtailed while Prime Minister: he had been named one of the "Ten Worst Enemies of the Press" by the Committee to Protect Journalists for his restrictions on newspapers and occasional imprisonment of journalists.[102] He turned to the blogosphere in response, writing a column for Malaysiakini, a website sympathetic to the opposition, and starting his own blog.[103] He unsuccessfully sought election from his local party division to be a delegate to UMNO's general assembly in 2006, where he planned to initiate a revolt against Abdullah's leadership of the party.[104] After the 2008 election, in which UMNO lost its two-thirds majority in parliament, Mahathir resigned from the party. Abdullah was replaced by his deputy, Najib Tun Razak, in 2009, a move that Mahathir publicly supported.[105] Mahathir immediately rejoined UMNO.[106] Mahathir underwent a heart bypass operation in 2007, following two heart attacks over the previous two years. He had undergone the same operation after his heart attack in 1989. After the 2007 operation, he suffered a chest infection. He was hospitalised for treatment of another chest infection in 2010.[107][108] [edit]