Malaysia, explained.

Photo frame with old and young Mahathir and Hasmah

A photo frame of the former Malaysia Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and wife Dr Siti Hasmah at their private residence in Selangor, Malaysia (Annice Lyn/Getty Images)

Malaysia’s old rivals just lost their last bridge

While Mahathir and Anwar fought, a bond between their wives kept the two men talking.

Luo Chen Jun

6 October 20264 min read

Tears in politics are usually discounted. Those of Mahathir Mohamad on 28 September were not. Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister, now 101, sat in a wheelchair with an oxygen tube and wept openly (Opens in new window) as his wife of 70 years, Dr Hasmah Mohd Ali, was buried in Putrajaya. She had died that morning, aged 100. Three days later he was back at her grave (Opens in new window), scattering rose petals and crying again.

As a Singaporean, I grew up watching Mahathir from across the Causeway, and tenderness was not what we associated with him. He was the neighbour who sparred with us over water prices and bridges, and the leader whose critics called him authoritarian at home. Yet their marriage was never touched by the kind of scandal that so often trails powerful men. They met in 1947 (Opens in new window) as medical students in Singapore. She became one of the first Malay women doctors (Opens in new window) and spent her career in maternal and child health.

A second figure at the funeral made it more than a family’s grief. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was once Mahathir’s deputy and chosen heir. In 1998, Mahathir sacked him, and Anwar was jailed on charges he has always called political. Twenty years later, the two joined forces (Opens in new window) to win the 2018 election. Anwar was pardoned, and Mahathir promised to hand over power. He never did, and the government collapsed in 2020.

Since Anwar took office in 2022, Mahathir has sued him for defamation (Opens in new window), accused him of seeking revenge (Opens in new window) as anti-corruption investigators examined his sons, and called for his resignation (Opens in new window). Southeast Asia has other long rivalries, but none conducted so publicly for so long. It resembles a contest of ideas less than it does the region’s most dramatic on-off relationship.

When the men were enemies, the women were not … That detail deserves more attention than it gets.

Yet Anwar interrupted his own speech (Opens in new window) to announce Dr Hasmah’s death and lead a prayer. He ordered a state funeral (Opens in new window). He came with his wife, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, shook Mahathir’s hand (Opens in new window), and wrote afterwards of “Kak Hasmah”, elder sister Hasmah, as a maternal figure and a friend. The family received them.

None of this was improvised. The two sides were bound before politics divided them: Dr Hasmah’s elder sister helped arrange (Opens in new window) Anwar’s marriage to Wan Azizah. When the men were enemies, the women were not. Anwar said in 2018 (Opens in new window) that he had found it hard to let go of the past, and that watching the two wives get along was what compelled him to move on.

That detail deserves more attention than it gets. The 2018 victory, which ended six decades of rule by the same coalition, is usually explained by public anger over the 1MDB corruption scandal and by Mahathir's pull with rural Malay voters. It also depended on a friendship between two doctors that survived what their husbands did to each other.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim pays his respects during the funeral of Siti Hasmah Mohamad Ali, the wife of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, seated right, at As Syarif Mosque in Kuala Lumpur on 28 September 2026 (Najjua Zulkefli/AFP via Getty Images)

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.

About the author

Luo Chen Jun

Luo Chen Jun is a Partnerships Manager at Common Purpose Asia Pacific in Singapore and a member of the British Council's UK–Singapore Alumni Advisory Council.

Topics

Malaysia Government & politics Elections