KUALA LUMPUR, May 26 — Being part of a family that is entrenched in the country’s political landscape is something Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir is used to.
After all, she is Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s daughter, and one of his children who is instantly recognisable to the public, especially when she is vocal about human rights and the rights of women.
This general election saw her speaking at ceramahs during the campaigning period for the first time.
It was 15 speaking engagements in 10 days.
She was also involved in Maria Chin Abdullah’s campaign for the Petaling Jaya parliamentary seat.
Marina (indelible ink still visible on her finger nail) sat down with Malay Mail at her Bangsar office to talk about the general election and the aftermath.
Dad (that’s Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad) and I
Marina said it was simplistic to put her on “one side” and her father on the other (prior to current times) adding that she could observe that he was edging towards politics again.”
She recalled how it all began.
“Information initially started coming out about 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) that was not from the government but from other sources like DAP’s Tony Pua.
“I’m sure he reached out to them. They had the information. Then he started to reach out to various people,” she added.
Surprised at what happened with her father returning to politics, Marina said people were always asking her to talk Dr Mahathir into making a comeback in the 15 years he was away.
“I said, ‘no’. We got him back. We were very happy. No, he’s not going back to politics. Then all these things started happening.”
She remembered a lunch she had with him, prior to him being announced as Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) prime minister-designate.
“I looked at him and said, ‘Are you thinking of standing?’ and he looked back at me guiltily. ‘You are, aren’t you?’ ‘At your age?’ But there’s no telling him.”
Marina said Dr Mahathir joining PH was a great move as it not only helped the coalition gel together but also gave people a sense of confidence in the then-Opposition.
“It was someone they know, someone who has experience and someone with whom they felt more comfortable. It’s not a totally unknown entity that you want to bring in. And that was the real factor.
“Of course, after that the other side, before the campaign, started to make all sorts of mistakes. I still don’t understand why they made them.”
Why do you think PH won?
She said that it was because PH represented viable change.
“People really wanted change. They didn’t want the same old thing,” she said adding that the Goods and Services Tax also played a part.
She related how while some were open in their want for change, others (during her door-to-door campaigning) quietly said: “This time. Kali inilah.”
She also said things came together perfectly with Barisan Nasional (BN) making mistakes and having a “degraded” reputation.
Calling the redelineation exercise “apartheid” as it was based on racial lines, she said:
“I don’t know what gave them the idea that people voted like that. So stereotype...if you are Malay, you must vote for BN, if you are non-Malay, you must vote for Pakatan. Where did they get this idea?”
Malaysians coming together
Marina said people initiatives like ‘Pulang Mengundi’, ‘Undi Rabu’ and people helping to get overseas votes in time to the polling stations are all efforts made to defend the people’s right to vote.
“We had to defend our right to vote because people who were supposed to protect it were doing everything to violate that right,” she said.
“People got so angry and felt insulted. You think we are stupid? That’s the thing. You cannot win an election by insulting people.”
No to Seri Perdana
“Anyone who has moved house knows what a huge hassle it is. You have to pack up, clean up stuff and move there,” Marina said of her parents’ decision to stay put at their own home in Seri Kembangan.
“I asked them a long while ago, ‘should you win, are you going to move to Seri Perdana?’ (The answer was) no.”
“They are only going to be there for two years, so what’s the point?”
She added that the official residence of the prime minister would probably be used for official functions.
Marina remembered receiving so many messages from people saying they were glad to have Dr Mahathir back while others asked him to rest and for her to take care of him.
“My hands have been stuck on my phone. Before elections, after elections. It’s really heartening to me.”
She jokingly related how she was sometimes a substitute for her father adding that she expected the positive reception to triple or quadruple in the future.
She recalled a recent episode when she went to Bangsar Village for grocery shopping and stopped by one of the stalls at a bazaar there to purchase an item.
One thing led to another and she was asked by people to take photos with them while there were some who asked her to visit their stall.
“It was an hour before I finally got to do my groceries and go off,” she said.
Campaigning
Her involvement in Maria’s campaign happened when friends from the various women’s movements stepped up to help.
They included Ivy Josiah and Masjaliza Hamzah.
“Essentially, they were people who have known her for so long, from Bersih and women’s groups. We came together and started organising ourselves.”
Describing the entire operation as a “citizen’s movement”, Marina said this included fund raising and making sure everything was by the book, getting volunteers and getting enough polling and counting agents (Paca).
“Somebody offered their empty clinic as a bilik gerakan, saying, ‘I’ll postpone opening my clinic so you can have it first.’”
She also said Maria ended up having 700 people to be Paca, resulting in them being farmed out to candidates who had less.
“It was just great. The whole camaraderie thing.”
Ceramahs
What started the ball rolling for her speaking at ceramahs was when she attended a meeting with PH leaders a week before nomination.
She was there with a video crew to capture footage of her father.
“Lim Guan Eng came to me and said, ‘Oh Marina you have to come to Penang to talk’. I said, ‘what talk?’”
To which, Lim told her that he was having a ceramah and invited her to speak.
This then went on to Teresa Kok, who also asked her to come and speak at a ceramah, followed by Fahmi Fadzil.
Having attended nomination day in Langkawi where her father, Dr Mahathir stood as candidate, she flew to Penang and spoke at her first ceramah that night in Seberang Prai.
She and Lim then rushed over to the Esplanade on Penang island and promptly got stuck in a traffic jam getting to the area.
Relating how Lim jumped onto a motorcycle to get to the ceramah venue in time, she could not do the same as she was wearing a baju kurung.
However, the driver managed to get her there in 10 minutes.
“They took me right on the stage and the emcee announced me. I looked up and saw this incredible field of people. I swear it was 100,000 people or something like that. They were holding up their phones.
“It was just overwhelming. I thought, ‘This must be how the Rolling Stones feel.’ It was just amazing, the screaming and shouting.”
“After that, we went for nasi kandar at Nasi Kandar Beratur and we sat down. Guan Eng arrived with his wife and people and Zairil (Khir Johari). It was quite a nice, big table.”
The crazy marathon of speaking at ceramahs continued in Johor with Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan and other places such as Janda Baik in Pahang, Kuchai Lama and Sri Sentosa in Kuala Lumpur.
During her segment of ceramah, she said she sent greetings from her father.
“They always seemed to love that. I’m just his substitute,” she added.
She would then talk about why her 92-year-old father was out campaigning (he felt so strongly because the country was suffering) and that Malaysians needed to save it.
Marina also told crowds about how her father could not do the job alone and he needed the help of other PH leaders and the rakyat.
“You all have to come out and help him. That’s the only way it will work. If you come out in big numbers and vote. That was basically it,” she said.
Adding that she would add on a bit about what PH was doing (“I’m not a politician”), Marina also related her personal stories such as how happy the family was when her father stepped down 15 years ago because he had time to play with his 18 grandchildren.
“You know he has 18 grandchildren? And everyone goes ohhhhh. They love all these personal tidbits,” she added.
She also went door-to-door campaigning with Ketari state candidate Young Syefura Othman where most people they approached were friendly.
Only residents in one house with a BN flag refused to talk to them.
Election day
“I really didn’t dare to think of May 10. I didn’t want to think about it. To me, life stopped on May 9. Then it was out of our hands and up to the voters.”
She added that on the morning of election day, she messaged her neighbourhood chat group to head out and vote.
It turned out there were those who were voting in different places.
So, she headed out with her husband Tara Sosrowardoyo to the nearby school which was her polling centre.
“I started to feel slightly anxious when he pointed out at Publika, where we had gone to have something to eat and buy groceries, that there were not many people who had indelible ink on their fingers,” she said.
She put it off as the likelihood that they were not Malaysians or simply those who had not gone to vote yet.
Later, she put up a Facebook post, urging people to go out and vote.
Then, the stories about the extra long queues at the polling centres started coming in and news that the Election Commission (EC) was not going to allow them to vote past 5pm although they were already there.
“The Election Commission was just despicable. It was really disrespecting people’s right to vote,” she said.
She added that no one dared to predict the results going into election night.
“They were getting a bit excited,” she said adding that the big screen at a hall in Sheraton Hotel, Petaling Jaya also had on results being shown by Malaysiakini..
Everyone, she said was relying on EC.
“We didn’t know why EC was holding up,” she said adding that Datuk Seri Azmin Ali and Mohamad Sabu had said during their campaign speeches that if there was no announcement by 12am then there was a “really big chance” PH had won.
And while history was being made, there were some signs of exhaustion.
“My mum was really exhausted and laid down on the chairs and slept for a while. Everybody was saying, ‘Go up, there is a room for you.’ But she just didn’t want to leave. She wanted to be there,” she said.
The reality that PH had won, she said took some time to sink in.
“It crashed down on me that, ‘Oh my God, we did this.’”
“Plus, I’m so used to my father winning but it took a while...ok he won but this time on this side,” she said.
Swearing in
Marina had been scheduled to fly off to Bangladesh on May 10 and while on her way to the airport with Tara, her father had still not been sworn in.
She decided to abandon the flight and head over to Gate 2 of Istana Negara where people had started to gather.
She went off for a quick dinner and returned to see the crowds had grown.
“All these people were there. They were singing and chanting. It was quite amazing,” she said adding she had also texted her brother and sister-in-law who were inside the palace to find out what was happening.
She finally saw the swearing-in ceremony on her handphone and subsequently, rushed off to Sheraton Hotel where a press conference was scheduled.
Once there, Marina was again amazed at the number of people who gathered there including those at the lobby, some taking the obligatory photos.
“I have never seen anything like it. It was just incredible. It was just so crazy and I have never seen people so happy. All sorts of people. Everybody was there.”
Role of women
Marina said she hoped it will be a “big step” forward for women adding that the country now had a woman deputy prime minister in Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.
“I think it’s up to the ones appointed to show their stuff. They have to do their jobs well and do everything to advance the women’s cause,” she said.
“We have had women ministers before, who did absolutely nothing. They just smiled or they kowtowed to whatever the men said. I think they were chosen because they were tame.
“Partly, it was their personal views. But also it’s because of too few numbers then it’s difficult to stand for women’s rights in a room full of men.”
She added that she would continue to speak up for women’s and human rights.
“Just because we have a new government doesn’t mean I’m going to slack off.”
“We still have a watchdog role to play. That is the role of civil society and it’s very important for civil society to continue doing that.”
