Malaysia elections: Could Mahathir Mohamad make a comeback?

Among the torrent of election propaganda being produced in the campaigns to lead Malaysia for the next five years, one slickly-produced video stands out.

In it, an adorable young Malay girl suddenly finds herself looking up at the grandfatherly face of the man who ruled and profoundly shaped Malaysia for 22 years, and now, at the astonishing age of 92, is leading the challenge to his former party, the United Malays National Organisation's (UMNO) monopoly on power.

"I am already old," explains Dr Mahathir Mohamad to the girl, as tears fill his eyes. "I haven't much time left. I have to do some work to rebuild our country; perhaps because of mistakes I, myself, made in the past."

In the background we hear the song Salam Terakhir (Final Greeting), by one of Malaysia's most popular performers Sudirman Arshad, who died in 1992 at the age of 37.

The comeback of Dr Mahathir has electrified an election contest, which might otherwise have been very one-sided, reviving an opposition alliance which had started to disintegrate after the re-imprisonment in 2015 of its leader, Anwar Ibrahim.

Mr Anwar, who, in one of many ironies in this election, was originally jailed in 1999 on the orders of Dr Mahathir, was released in 2004, but then found himself facing the same sodomy charges again after coming close to defeating UMNO at the last election in 2013.

Without him, the likelihood of a serious challenge this time to Prime Minister Najib Razak had seemed remote.

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Dr Mahathir was for 18 years an implacable opponent of Anwar Ibrahim, perhaps the only Malay politician who could match him in cleverness and charisma.

At one time his chosen successor, they disagreed over how to deal with the financial crisis which struck South East Asia in 1997, with Mr Anwar arguing that the government could no longer afford the lavish, state-funded companies with which Dr Mahathir hoped to lift the prosperity of ethnic Malays.

source:www.bbc.com