Mahathir

Did you know that:

1) Mahathir could be the oldest Prime Minister/President/Emperor ever of the present and the past?

2) Mahathir still wears the name tag to work, like a typical technocrat, to show that everybody has to follow rules in the government?

3) Mahathir's peers are mostly either dead, senile or bedridden?

4) Mahathir was already a 32 year old adult with conviction at the point of independence in 1957?

5) Mahathir was serving as a doctor in rural Malay kampungs 60 years ago and was driven by the urge to develop his people and bring them out of poverty?

6) Mahathir's worldview was shaped amidst the backdrop of poor and newly independent developing countries when neither of us were born? At that time, most Muslim countries were poor, weak, illiterate and isolated.

7) Mahathir was active in politics when the country had barely any hard and soft infrastructure?

8) Mahathir was there when illiteracy was still widespread amongst the people?

9) Mahathir is still strongly in love with his wife of more than 60 years?

10) Mahathir was a peer of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Gorbachev, Bush Senior, Deng Xiao Peng, Robert Mugabe, Mandela, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin? And he was already a well-read young adult when Churchill, FDR, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Gandhi, MLK, Nasser, David Ben Gurion, Sukarno were still alive?

11) Mahathir prays 5 times a day, does not drink, gamble and womanise and still speaks up for the Muslim world consistently?

12) Mahathir still works hard every day at the age of 94? And he doesn't complain about lack of work life balance? In fact, he probably does 996.

Just some fun facts in case we think we are wiser when we have only lived through 1/3 of his lifetime. It becomes a humbling yardstick when we put some facts in perspective.

This is not to put Tun M on a pedestal, but rather to accord much respect to a man who is more than just headlines in today's newspapers.

He is a living treasure and an artifact from the last of a generation who built this country called Malaysia.

Have faith in him. He knows what he is doing. He has been building for the past 60 years.