In Malaysia, political parties are built around individual leaders more than ideas. So when official channels between rival camps shut down, personal friendships like this one are what keep them talking. But such friendships are informal, answer to no one, and last only as long as the people in them.
With Dr Hasmah gone, one of the few bridges between the two camps has gone too. This comes at a time when Malay voters are split among several parties, and an election is due by early 2028. The risk is not that the two men start fighting again, because they never stopped. It is that their successors inherit the grudge without the friendship that kept it in check.
Was the handshake sincere? I can’t tell, and both men are too experienced to give it away. A state funeral costs a sitting prime minister very little, and it makes him look generous.
But I have come to think the question matters less than it seems. In this region, leaders who lose power are more often jailed, driven abroad or written out of history. So when a prime minister publicly honours the family of his harshest critic, he sets an example that other leaders can be measured against. For those of us on both sides of the Causeway who grew up with this feud always in the background, the sight meant something, whatever either man felt.
Anwar found generous words for Dr Hasmah. The harder ones, between the two men, remain unsaid. Mahathir is frail. He was admitted for observation (Opens in new window) the day after the funeral, though his daughter says he is healthy but lonely (Opens in new window).
There is still time for a plain accounting of 1998 and 2020, in their own words. Malaysia would gain more from that than from another photograph, and it need not end in an alliance. Dr Hasmah kept the possibility alive through most of their quarrel, and it should not be buried with her.
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