The Malaysian Insight

MALAYSIAN youth should take part in the country’s development to prevent the country’s future from being ruined, Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today.

Speaking during a Facebook Live video session, the former prime minister urged youth to take part in the country’s political, economic and social development to secure the future generation’s survival.

“The young people will inherit this country. Of course, they do not want to inherit a country that is in ruins… before they are influenced, they can decide what needs to be done and to stop our country from being in ruin at the next general election,” he said to his viewers.

He said he was involved in activism during his 20s.

“When I was in my youth during the Malayan Union times (I was very much involved), including Tun (Abdul) Razak (Hussein). He was in his 40s but still in his youth.

“I hope that youth will not say, ‘Wait till I grow up, only decide’, but when they grow up the situation is has already worsened and is very hard to fix it.”

Facebook commenters asked Dr Mahathir what he would do should the public want him to be the next prime minister. He said that he would not betray Pakatan Harapan, but hoped that his views would be taken into consideration if the coalition formed the next government.

“I will not go behind Pakatan Harapan’s back and say that I want to be the next prime minister, besides, I have already said to myself that when I retire, I will not be prime minister again,” he said.

Dr Mahathir also commented on Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin claim that the former prime minister had wanted Proton to partner with China automaker Geely back in 2014.

“Firstly, that is not true, I visited Geely with (businessman) Syed Mohktar (Al-Bukhary). This happened when I had retired (as prime minister) and was only the adviser to Proton,” Dr Mahathir said shaking his head.

Dr Mahathir explained he was only trying to improve Proton’s engines and was doing research on how to do so.

“We were looking on how to improve our vehicles via the engine, Geely used Volvo engines, and I had gone to Sweden to try it out, then only went to Geely.

“We want to know what kind of cooperation that we can do with Geely, same like Volkswagen. And we were also looking at other  carmakers (on how they build their vehicles) to improve the performance of Proton,” Dr Mahathir said, referring to Proton’s on again, off again courtship of the German carmaker from 2004 till 2012.

He said if he was the prime minister today, he would set up a task force to advise him on the falling ringgit, just like he did during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

He then ended his live video feed saying that he will be back again two weeks later for another session. – June 1, 2017.