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PM Anwar Ibrahim, welcome to ASEAN’s elderly leaders' club
Anwar’s most daunting challenge will be to convince the country’s Malay majority and Chinese and Indian minorities that the multi-ethnic nation will be much more prosperous and more modern when they work together on equal footing.
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Then-Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim (center) leaves after meeting with Malaysia's king at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur on Nov. 22. (AFP/Mohd Rasfan)
P
resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo was the first foreign head of state to personally congratulate newly appointed Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim after he took the oath of office before King Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday.
The 61-year-old Indonesian president welcomed the 75-year-old veteran politician to the club of ASEAN, which the former will chair next year.
A close collaboration between Jokowi and Anwar in convincing other ASEAN leaders that democracy is the only sustainable and right way to produce true leaders is much needed.
The super slow regeneration of leaders in the region is quite alarming, and it is probably due to the significant lack of democratic mechanisms. Anwar himself was a victim of this phenomenon. For 24 years, the Malaysian elite blocked his rise to the top. Many found their tactic of imprisoning Anwar disgusting.
Although Anwar, a former top opposition leader, is the newest “grandpa” on the block, he is among the oldest sitting ASEAN leaders. The average age of the 10 leaders of ASEAN is 70 years and six months. President Jokowi is the youngest, while the oldest are Laotian President Thongloun Sisoulith and Myanmar civilian government leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who are both 77.
As ASEAN does not recognize Myanmar’s junta leader, the 66-year-old Min Aung Hlaing, who toppled Suu Kyi in the country’s February 2021 coup, I count the latter as the legitimate leader of Myanmar. The army general is so confident no one can stop him from ruling the country that he has dared to pooh-pooh the five-point consensus he signed in front of other ASEAN leaders in April 2021.
As an opposition leader for about 24 years, Anwar witnessed how ruthlessly his former mentor Mahathir Mohamad and the elite of the then-ruling party, the UMNO, conspired to keep Anwar from the premiership, which was nearly within his grasp in 1998. Now he has a noble mission to act as a kind of Nelson Mandela for Malaysia to reconcile the divided nation.
