Anwar Ibrahim expects to succeed Mahathir Mohamad as Malaysian PM within two years, plans to hold Goldman Sachs to account over 1MDB
- The men have presented a united front to the public, giving Mahathir a free hand to root out corruption
- Anwar was unsure whether Malaysia will recover US$7.5 billion from Goldman as compensation for 1MDB scandal
“Of course it’s not five years because he’s made it very clear they would not exceed two years,” Anwar Ibrahim, leader of the People’s Justice Party, said in an interview on Wednesday in New York on Bloomberg Television. “But it’s important to allow him to govern effectively because we are in very difficult and trying times.”
Mahathir pledged during last year’s election campaign to stand aside for Anwar once he was pardoned, which happened just a week after the opposition’s shock victory in May. The 93-year-old Mahathir then pushed back the time line to one to two years. Anwar concurred, saying he planned to travel and spend time with his family after more than three years of imprisonment.
That public stance belies decades of enmity between them: Mahathir fired Anwar as his deputy in 1998 over a dispute on how to respond to the Asian financial crisis. Anwar was later jailed for committing sodomy and abusing power, which he denied, then subsequently imprisoned for another sodomy conviction. Anwar has said that the charges were politically motivated.