Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – It’s members of the US Congress at some point, a Hollywood star or rich donors one other, all carrying the identical message to President Joe Biden — that they need the 81-year-old to step apart from the 2024 presidential race.
Surveys present that many American voters are involved in regards to the superior years and efficiency of Biden. Up in opposition to him is 78-year-old Donald Trump, barely youthful, who survived an assassination try final week.
However age isn’t any challenge for Southeast Asia’s Malaysia which has seen its prime politicians rise to energy with common help regardless of their very superior years.
The clearest examples are Mahathir Mohamad, who turned the nation’s seventh prime minister at 92 years of age in 2018, and the incumbent, Anwar Ibrahim – Malaysia’s tenth premier, who took workplace in his mid-70s in 2022.
Malaysian voters who spoke to Al Jazeera stated the insurance policies of Mahathir and Anwar mattered greater than their age when the nation went to the polls.
“I did contemplate their age, Mahathir specifically, given he was already in his 90s by that time,” a 35-year-old enterprise government – who glided by the identify Layla Subra – instructed Al Jazeera.
“However of their case, each seemed that they’re fairly sharp and centered regardless of their age. So it didn’t strongly affect my voting selections,” Subra stated.
Mahathir – who had already served as Malaysia’s prime minister for a complete of twenty-two years from 1981 to 2003 – earned a spot within the Guinness World Information because the oldest serving prime minister when he was re-elected in 2018 aged 92 years and 141 days.
Although the official retirement age is 60 in Malaysia – a rustic of 34 million individuals the place the median age is simply greater than 30 – advancing years are hardly ever seen as an element for voters who’ve lengthy grown used to the concept of elder lawmakers.
In China too, age just isn’t seen as an obstacle in politics.
Xi Jinping, who’s now 71, secured his third five-year time period as president final yr, whereas the nation’s then paramount chief Deng Xiaoping was 87 years outdated when he undertook his famed “southern tour” in 1992 geared toward financial reform following stagnation within the aftermath of the army crackdown on the Tiananmen protests in 1989.
Seen as his final, large-scale political initiative, Deng’s tour of key southern financial zones affirmed China’s dedication to free market liberalisation and opening of the Chinese language economic system to commerce.
By no means too outdated for Malaysian politics
It isn’t unusual to see politicians contest elections to defend seats they’ve held for many years within the nation’s parliamentary system.
Malaysia’s at the moment oldest member of parliament is Fong Kui Lun, 77, of the Democratic Motion Social gathering (DAP), who has held his seat since 1999.
Whereas some voters instructed Al Jazeera they wish to see youthful individuals in election lineups, they had been extra involved with the insurance policies of the day than with a candidate’s age.
“My precedence can be for whoever has a greater plan, not essentially age,” stated workplace supervisor Shaun Ho, 40.
“An older chief with a greater plan would nonetheless be preferable to a youthful chief who nonetheless follows the established order,” Shaun stated.
Within the run-up to the 2018 election, Mahathir campaigned on a robust message of anticorruption in opposition to his former protege Najib Razak, who was later convicted for his function within the 1MDB financial scandal. Najib, the nation’s sixth prime minister, was handed a 12-year jail time period, although his sentence was halved early this yr by the nation’s pardons board.
Malaysians don’t straight select their heads of presidency, as an alternative, they vote for candidates of their areas of residence, historically alongside occasion traces.
“Who the member of parliament is commonly doesn’t matter, as a result of we principally are voting for the occasion we wish in energy for his or her insurance policies,” businessman Nicholas Chin, 40, stated.
“We’re all consigned to vote strategically. That’s to say, I’ll vote for the candidate I feel will do the least hurt,” Chin stated.
Malaysia has had 10 prime ministers since its independence from British colonial rule in 1957, with its first 4 elected leaders aged of their late 40s to mid-50s.
However prime ministers have all shared comparable traits. They’ve all been male, Muslim by religion, and have at one level been or had been a part of the United Malays Nationwide Organisation (UMNO), as soon as the nation’s greatest political occasion.
Well being, not age, is the issue
Even of their superior years, Mahathir, 99, and Anwar, 76, have in current instances appeared to have largely maintained their respective bodily and psychological well being.
A medical physician when he entered politics within the late Nineteen Fifties, Mahathir instructed the AFP information company in 2020 that he stored match utilizing each a treadmill and an train bicycle, with a disciplined weight loss program in tow.
In February final yr, Anwar stated in a put up on social media that he had gone for a medical checkup and the medical doctors had given him a clear invoice of well being.
That was regardless of a critical spinal harm and spending practically a decade in jail after being jailed twice on fees of sodomy that had been broadly seen as politically motivated. His first conviction was overturned, and he obtained a pardon for the second.
In 2022, Mahathir suffered his worst political defeat on the nationwide polls, which adopted after he resigned as premier two years earlier and later fashioned a brand new occasion that centered on ethnic Malay voters.
Although going through a sequence of current well being issues and turning 99 earlier this month, Mahathir continues to pen public ideas on politics. At present in hospital once more for medical remedy, he couldn’t be reached for remark by Al Jazeera.
Bridget Welsh, a political analyst on the College of Nottingham Malaysia, stated whereas a candidate’s age does matter for some voters, what issues extra is a candidate’s competency and background.
“For the case of Mahathir, his well being didn’t appear to be a problem however what emerged later was the attitude of concepts,” Welsh stated.
“Age solely tells a part of the story … For the case of Joe Biden, it’s his well being,” she stated.
Requires Biden to step apart from the presidential race have elevated inside his Democratic Social gathering as he tested positive for COVID-19 final week on prime of his quite a few public gaffes through the years.
In a single current occasion, Biden referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russian President Vladimir Putin and has struggled to search out the best phrases at different public appearances.
Following his disastrous televised public debate in opposition to Trump that left Democrats in a panic, extra voices are questioning aloud if Biden ought to proceed within the race, whereas Trump has been referred to as out over his diatribes in opposition to minorities and migrants.
“I feel the distinction with our elections and the US one is that Biden and Trump are each bodily and mentally unfit,” stated 37-year-old Malaysian author and actor Elza Irdalynna.
Within the US’s deeply polarised local weather, political personalities matter greater than insurance policies for the “common American” voter, Elza stated.
“That’s why they want a preferred figurehead to guide the race as a result of that’s what’s seen,” she stated.
“Regardless that they’ve higher, youthful candidates deserving of these seats,” she added.