Mahathir: RM20,000 a month and can’t even spend it all

Dr Mahathir contrasts Najib and Rosmah's extravagance with his own modest ways.

KUALA LUMPUR: Dr Mahathir Mohamad made sarcastic comparisons today between his modest living as prime minister and the lavish lifestyles of Najib Razak and Rosmah Mansor.

He called into question the prime minister’s wealth, talking of Najib hosting “the wedding of the century” for his daughter earlier this month.

By contrast he said even he could not afford to organise such weddings for his four children while he was in office. “When my four children got married, did anyone know? No. You didn’t even hear of it,” he added.

“When his daughter got married, look at the wedding. Wow. It was like a wedding of the century. Not the wedding of the year, but the wedding of the century,” he said at a packed public forum here in his honour.

Najib’s daughter Nooryana Najwa, married DaniyarKessikbayev, a highly-connected Kazakh.

Dr Mahathir said 300 people accompanied Najib to his daughter’s wedding reception in Kazakhstan, and demanded to know who had helped finance the trip.

“300 people. That’s a lot. Can you imagine? 300 people taken with him to Kazakhstan. Who are these 300 people?”

Dr Mahathir has previously said he had known about Najib and Rosmah Mansor’s fondness for luxury items but had been willing to overlook the matter before Najib became prime minister.

He could no longer support Najib in view of allegations of corruption, referring to the RM42 billion debt of 1Malaysia Development Bhd. “He has lost a lot of people’s money. I cannot let that happen,” he said.

Dr Mahathir also contrasted Najib’s ways as prime minister to his own more modest lifestle.

“One day (when I was young), I wanted to eat mee. But i only had 20 sen, so the mamak wouldn’t sell to me. When I became prime minister, I could have even 1,000 plates of mee,” he said.

The government provided everything for him, from housing to transport, so he did not need to spend his salary.

“I do not think anyone could spend more than (what the government provides); I couldn’t even spend my own money,” Dr Mahathir said.

He said his salary was RM8,000 when he first became prime minister, and RM20,000 when he retired 22 years later.

“Look at how many plates of mee I can buy,” he said. “(But) I did not use my salary; the government provided me with everything.”

He said the government still provides for him today, including use of government aircraft “but just a small one”, in a remark that made reference to public anger with Rosmah’s apparent use of Perdana One for a trip to the United States, and the later announcement of the purchase of a new VIP aircraft.