Now, PM Mahathir Mohamad plans to give Malaysia a new 'national car'

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is reviving his dream of a new national car after the automaker he started in the 1980s was privatized and a stake was later sold to a Chinese company. “Our ambition is to start another national car, perhaps with some help from Southeast Asia,” he said at a Nikkei conference in Tokyo, his first official overseas trip since being reinstalled as premier last month. “Malaysia has the capacity to do almost 100 percent of the development of a new automobile. 

This can be obtained by having foreign partners.” Proton Holdings Bhd., the carmaker Mahathir started in 1983 during his first stint as premier, faltered over the years even with billions of dollars in grants and subsidies. It was taken private in 2012 by DRB-Hicom Bhd., a conglomerate controlled by Malaysian billionaire Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary. Last year, China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. bought a 49.9 percent stake in Proton. Mahathir saw it as an insult to national pride, and viewed the carmaker as collateral damage from his ongoing feud with then-premier Najib Razak. He criticized the government for the sale, saying that the administration “seems to be set on bankrupting Proton and selling it off, because I think it is regarded as my baby.”

Malaysia: 92-yr old Mahathir ousts Najib; ends 60-yr rule by single party

Mahathir Mohamad won a stunning victory in Malaysia’s election, ending the six-decade rule of Prime Minister Najib Razak’s party in a landmark shift for the Southeast Asian nation.

Mahathir, Malaysia’s longest-serving premier who defected to the opposition to take on Najib, will return to power at the age of 92. His four-party Pakatan Harapan alliance won at least 112 of 222 parliamentary seats in Wednesday’s vote, official figures from the election commission showed.

Najib had faced increased public anger over a goods-and-services tax that boosted prices and a money laundering scandal involving hundreds of millions of dollars siphoned from state investment firm 1MDB. While Najib denied wrongdoing, Mahathir lambasted him as a “thief” on the campaign trail.

“This has been a Malaysian tsunami, across the board and the country,” said Bridget Welsh, a political scientist at John Cabot University in Rome who specializes in Southeast Asia. “Mahathir was a game changer. But it also took Najib. They wanted Najib gone.”

Palm oil producers fear looming EU environment law will hurt millions

Millions of people running small-time oil palm plantations will suffer if the European Parliament goes ahead with “unfair” measures that could curb palm oil use, the world’s two largest palm oil producers said on Wednesday.

In April, the European Parliament backed a call for greater vetting of palm and other vegetable oils used in biofuels to prevent the European Union’s renewable transport targets for post-2020 leading to deforestation.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak and Indonesian President Joko Widodo said the resolution by the European Parliament singles out palm oil, even as the production of other vegetable oils has “shown to contribute to the deforestation”.

They said restricting market access for palm oil would also work against the United Nations’ goal of eradicating poverty and raising income levels.

“Any discriminatory measures arising from the Resolution will not only be seen as unfair practices to trade but will also affect the livelihood of millions of palm smallholders in Indonesia and Malaysia,” the two leaders said in a joint statement.
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