CNN :
Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who staged a stunning election upset earlier this year to return to power aged 92, said he inherited a government lousy with corruption and with few trustworthy officials.
“From outside we saw the damage, but we never expected the damage to be so extensive,” he told CNN at his offices in Putrajaya. “Most of the top echelons in the government are corrupt.”
Mahathir’s predecessor and former protege Najib Razak has been charged with multiple counts of corruption for allegedly embezzling millions in public money from Malaysia’s 1MDB fund.
“I have to work with some of those people who are suspect,” Mahathir said. “It’s a very difficult job, if you don’t work with people you trust, you don’t know whether what you want them to do will be done or not.”
Malaysia ranked 62 of 180 countries in Transparency International’s most recent global corruption index, with the NGO’s local affiliate warning that corrupt officials have been able to “stash their ill-gotten gains in their house or foreign banks and invest them in luxurious mansions, expensive cars or lavish lifestyle for their children with total impunity and in blatant disregard for the citizens they are supposed to serve.”
As well as widespread corruption and the case against Najib, Mahathir is also facing significant foreign policy challenges, as Malaysia faces a more aggressive China and the fallout from US President Donald Trump’s trade war. Now 93, Mahathir is the world’s oldest leader, 21 years older than Trump and more than twice the age of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Credited with turning Malaysia into a major trading and economic force in Southeast Asia, Mahathir left politics in 2003, but he returned with a vengeance this year, determined to oust Najib, who he blasted as corrupt and dictatorial.
To do so, he teamed up with former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who Mahathir himself once jailed, to lead a coalition of opposition parties which succeeded in toppling Najib in a landslide.
