Mahathir’s Sour Grapes over Anwar’s ASEAN Triumph

OPINION | Mahathir’s Sour Grapes over Anwar’s ASEAN Triumph


11 Nov 2025 • 1:30 PM MYT


TheRealNehruism
An award-winning Newswav creator, Bebas News columnist & ex-FMT columnist

Image credit: Harakah Daily


If you’ve been wondering whether Dr Mahathir Mohamad feels a tinge of envy watching Anwar Ibrahim take the international stage at the recent ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, you might not have to wonder too long. Some of the things Mahathir has been saying about ASEAN since that event seem to say it all.


To be blunt, Mahathir really has no reason to be talking about ASEAN anymore. At a time when even his views on Malaysia barely register where decisions are made, his sudden interest in regional affairs feels almost like someone who, after being refused a RM10 loan, decides to ask for RM100 instead.


So why this sudden fixation on ASEAN?


The answer may be simpler — and more human — than we think. Watching Anwar, his old adversary, chair ASEAN for two years and close it with a highly successful, well-received summit — not in the Putrajaya that Mahathir built, but in Kuala Lumpur under Anwar’s name — must sting.


Like the fox in the old fable, who dismissed the grapes it couldn’t reach as sour, Mahathir too seems to be doing some sour-grape philosophising of his own. Unable to bask in relevance, he’s reaching for the next best thing: trying to sound like the elder statesman that the world still listens to.


And so, out came his latest idea — that ASEAN should adopt a “common defence and security policy” to stand up to major powers like the US and China.


Unfortunately for him, experts wasted no time calling out the absurdity of that notion. According to a report by Free Malaysia Today, international relations and defence analysts described the proposal as “impossible” and “unrealistic.”



Dr Phar Kim Beng of IIUM noted that ASEAN’s member states are far too different in their political systems and priorities to ever form a NATO-style military pact. He pointed out that Mahathir was confusing the idea of strength in numbers with an actual defence alliance, and that the bloc’s diversity made such cooperation structurally unworkable.


Lam Choong Wah, a defence analyst from Universiti Malaya, went even further, saying ASEAN couldn’t even pretend to be neutral anymore. Some countries, he said, are clearly pro-US — like Singapore and the Philippines — while others, such as Cambodia, lean heavily toward China. In such a divided environment, talk of a “common defence policy” is little more than daydreaming.


Both experts agreed that ASEAN should instead focus on building internal trust and economic resilience, rather than chasing unrealistic military unity.



So what prompted Mahathir to suddenly play the regional defence philosopher?


Maybe his comments weren’t really about ASEAN at all. Maybe they were about Anwar.


Just a few days earlier, Mahathir had taken to Facebook to accuse the government of “handing over Malaysia’s independence” to the United States in exchange for trade benefits. He wrote that Malaysia was now “subjected to the dictates of the US,” claiming that the country had “surrendered its sovereignty” for “crumbs” in the form of tariff reliefs.


On the surface, it sounded patriotic — even righteous. But when viewed in the broader political context, it looked more like another attempt to paint Anwar’s government as weak, subservient, and unprincipled, while he, Mahathir, remained the unbowed nationalist of yesteryear.


The irony, of course, is that the man lecturing others about foreign control once courted Japanese investors, wooed foreign automakers, and thrived on global admiration during his own premiership. The problem isn’t that Mahathir has suddenly become anti-globalisation — it’s that the world has stopped listening, and that’s what hurts most.



His talk about ASEAN unity and national sovereignty is less a policy proposal than a form of political therapy — an aging titan trying to remind himself, and everyone else, that he still matters.


But history moves on.


While Anwar sits at the ASEAN table as a respected regional leader, Mahathir is left on the sidelines, delivering Facebook sermons that even his former admirers read out of nostalgia rather than conviction.


In the end, Mahathir’s problem isn’t with ASEAN, or even with Anwar’s policies. His real frustration is with time itself — a force no leader, no matter how long his shadow once was, can ever outmanoeuvre.

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