Title: Maverick, Martyr, or Messiah? Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim Return to Politics

Speakers: Dr. Khoo Boo Teik, Professor, National Graduate Institute for
Policy Studies and Dr. Sophie Lemiere, CSEAS Visiting Research Scholar
and Democracy in Hard Places Initiative Fellow, Ash Center for
Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard University

Date & Time: October 15th (Tues.) 2019, 17:00 – 18:30 → 16:30 – 18:00

Venue: Tonan-tei (Room no. 201) on the second floor of Inamori
Foundation Memorial Building, CSEAS, Kyoto University

Organizer: Dr. Hiroyuki YAMAMOTO, Associate Professor, CSEAS, Kyoto
University

Abstract:
Between September 1998 and September 2016, Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim were implacable enemies. Yet the 14th Malaysian General Election of May 9, 2018 returned them to the same side of the political divide with Anwar again slated to succeed Mahathir as prime minister. Is it plausible that the two men, whose worldviews appeared to be severely opposed in a time of enmity, have more in common in their newfound alliance? In a forum to tackle this intriguing puzzle, Sophie Lemiere and Khoo Boo Teik explore the enigmatic personae of the two politicians who have long bestridden contemporary Malaysian politics.

About the speakers:
Khoo Boo Teik, Professor, The National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo, is the author of Paradoxes of Mahathirism: An Intellectual Biography of Mahathir Mohamad.

Sophie Lemiere is a political anthropologist at Harvard University, and currently a Visiting Fellow at CSEAS. She is currently writing her first monograph on political legitimacy based on her experience in the inner circles of Mahathir from December 2017 to May 2018.