When aged leaders fail to see age as a handicap

WITH octogenarian Joe Biden exiting the US presidential contest because of age-related frailties, the tables have been turned on septuagenarian Donald Trump, the Republican candidate in the November election.

Trump had not criticised Biden as being too old for the presidency — not in this campaign cycle nor in the one four years ago — despite calling him ‘Sleepy Joe’ and implying that he was not all there at the only debate this year between the two men. Trump, 78, knows he is vulnerable on the issue of his age. He is only three years junior to Biden. Old age had dogged Biden even during the 2020 election season because he has been chronically prone to gaffes and suffered from stutter as a child, which he overcame. Not many people have thought of Trump as a septuagenarian because he has talked in videos, leaked during his 2020 campaign, of groping women. And, strippers have given graphic accounts of sex with the real estate mogul who became President. The popular image of Trump is that of a man full of libido, notwithstanding his age.

Both Trump’s approaching 80s and his convicted felonies and sexual escapades will be the stuff of an unfurling Democratic campaign. It will show the prowess of Kamala Harris as a former prosecutor when she is on the stump. Harris, who is Biden’s presumptive replacement as the Democratic Party’s candidate, is not yet 60 and can legitimately argue that Trump will soon be too old to govern if he is elected President. After all, her party replaced its candidate entirely on that ground. A majority of the Americans agreed with that decision, polls showed.

Growing old is an inevitable fact of life, but everyone recognises this handicap, except the aged Heads of State or Government themselves. Partly, this is because these leaders tend to be in a bubble, surrounded by loyalists — with the usual sprinkling of sycophants — who will never tell their bosses uncomfortable truths about the seriousness of their cognitive decline.

Biden’s is the most recent and widely publicised example. But there have been many before him. In India, then External Affairs Minister SM Krishna read the Portuguese Foreign Minister’s speech at the United Nations Security Council in 2011. He was as old as Trump when he made the faux pas. Indian officials did not blame the gaffe on Krishna’s reflexes or his agility. They said the UN staff routinely placed an English translation of a Portuguese minister’s speech on top of Krishna’s papers after the former had spoken immediately before it was India’s turn. Pakistanis at the UN made the most of this mistake.

In 2013, LK Advani, then 86, had to be persuaded to not press his claim all the way to be the BJP’s prime-ministerial candidate and make way for the incumbent, Narendra Modi.

Dinesh Singh became External Affairs Minister when he was only 68 in 1993. Tragically, he suffered a stroke shortly after his appointment, but the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao did not relieve him of the very demanding portfolio that involved frequent travel. Singh could not even go to his office in South Block and files had to be sent to his home, where he was mostly bedridden. Delhi’s grapevine was rife with speculation at that time about astrologers advising Rao that Singh’s presence in the Union Cabinet was auspicious. The last straw was Singh’s insistence in March 1994 that he would travel to Tehran as Rao’s Special Envoy to deliver a message from the Prime Minister to Iran’s then President, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The mission was critical. India was seeking Iran’s intervention at the UN Human Rights Commission to prevent a resolution on Kashmir being passed at the commission’s annual session in Geneva. Shortly after he came back from Tehran, Rao made Pranab Mukherjee External Affairs Minister because Singh simply could not discharge his duties. But Rao retained Singh as minister without portfolio until his death in November 1995.

I first interviewed Mahathir Mohamad in 1988 in Dubai. By then, he had served seven years as Malaysia’s fourth Prime Minister and was full of promise as an emerging leader of developing countries and as a moderate voice in the Islamic world. Maverick leaders like Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and unpredictable dictators like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein were the flavours in the Organisation of Islamic Conference — as it was then known — and in the Arab League. Mahathir’s time as Prime Minister spanned a total of 24 years, Malaysia’s longest. When he gave up office in 2003, he was already 78 years old. His dramatic return as Prime Minister 15 years later, when he was 93, is stuff of political legends.

In 1988, Mahathir talked about his part-Indian ancestry on the condition that I will not publish it. He was then vigorously implementing the electorally rewarding ‘Bumiputera’ policy which gave preference to the Malays over the Chinese and Indians in Malaysia’s multi-racial society. His Indian ancestry became less of a secret after he quit his first term as Prime Minister. The nonagenarian’s return as Head of Government was hard fought. He had to resign from his political organisation and form a new party, whose Malay name translates as the Malaysian United Indigenous Party. It created a coalition, which swept to power, defeating the party which had ruled Malaysia since the country’s formation in 1963. Sadly, Mahathir damaged his legacy by clinging to the PM’s chair even at the age of 95 although he had promised to be an interim leader. The Malaysian people defeated Mahathir in the General Election two years ago. He lost his deposit from the Langkawi constituency.

Habib Bourguiba was a leader lionised by the Tunisian people for leading his country to independence. Tunisia is a remarkable country where the Arab Spring began in 2010. Unfortunately, Bourguiba, too, did not know when to retire. At the age of 84, as President, he forgot that he had signed a decree expanding his Cabinet and appointed the head of a state-run newspaper, only to fire him in 24 hours. He recalled an Ambassador a few days after the envoy presented his credentials. Bourguiba’s peaceful ouster created the term ‘medical coup d’eacute;tat’ after his doctors declared him unfit to be President.