An audience with Mahathir

Taken from Malaysia Today;
This Viewpoint is an excerpt from an interview with Helen Vatsikopolous taken from ABC Asia Pacific's 'Asia Pacific Focus' program, first aired on July 2, 2006.

The frustrated former leader has become a one-man opposition, but the ruling UMNO Party is standing behind Mr Badawi and is threatening to discipline or even expel the man who ruled for 22 years.

Tun Mahathir, are you satisfied that your legacy is now in good hands, what you have passed on to your successor?
Not legacy, actually, it is certain things that were done wrongly, and this needs to be criticised, corrected. And if those things are done properly there should be no problem.

You mean the Proton car projects? You mean the bridge? Why are those two so important to you?
No, we went into the automotive industry because we need to have skills in engineering. It is something that speaks of a lot of engineering skills and that's what has happened. And it is a successful project. It was very profitable. Now that they have decided to remove the CEO who made it profitable, now they are losing money and they're not doing so well now and with the government policy to allow in an unadmitted number of foreign makes and also not too strict about under-declaration, this thing is hurting the local Proton car.

But could it be argued that there's a different person in power, has a different style, sees things differently?Fine, as long as he does a good job. But he's not. Where you have a company that is profitable, so profitable that it can do a lot of things with internal resources, today it is not doing well at all. So it must be that the approach is wrong.

But the Prime Minister has the Cabinet supporting him on those decisions.
Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed because this cabinet appears to be saying, "Yes, yes, yes," even before something is done. They have already said that they will say yes to anything that the Prime Minister says, and that was not my cabinet. In my cabinet before, we have very long debates and some of my ideas were thrown out.

Tun Mahathir, when you retired you said you weren't going to be a back seat driver, you weren't going to interfere. Should you perhaps just allow the Prime Minister to do his work?
I would allow if the thing is not harmful. But to do something that will obviously harm us, like allowing another country to decide on what you want to do in your own country, you lose sovereignty. That, I cannot accept.