SHE was the perfect First Lady.
She was the quiet figure next to her husband, the prime minister. You would see Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohamad Ali but she never vied for attention nor tried to steal the limelight from Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
At official dinners, while other leaders hardly talked to their wives, the opposite was true for Malaysia’s first couple – you would see Dr Mahathir and Dr Siti Hasmah chatting away like friends.
Dr Mahathir lost his best friend yesterday.
“Tun Siti was everything to him,” said Sufi Yusoff, the former prime minister’s long time aide.
Thousands of Malaysians across the divide share Dr Mahathir’s grief on social media.
“Kak Hasmah is not the woman behind the man. She was the one by his side,” said former Cabinet minister Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz.
In her capacity as the International Trade and Industry minister then, Rafidah would accompany Dr Mahathir on his visits abroad.
“Often, I saw Dr Mahathir and Kak Hasmah joke with each other and laugh together. It is not easy to find someone who is humble and I have a lot of respect for her,” she said.
Even Dr Siti Hasmah’s children said she was Dr Mahathir’s closest confidante and pillar of strength.
“She always gave him her 100% support. If she disagreed with him, she would do it privately. I think he tells her most things,” said daughter Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir in a past interview.
I consider myself lucky to have been part of the media delegation during several of Dr Mahathir’s trips abroad as prime minister.
Anyone familiar with these trips would understand how hectic it would be from the word go as Dr Mahathir would be meeting world leaders or potential investors while we, the media would be tagging along for these meetings, albeit outside the meeting venues.
Dr Siti Hasmah would be on most trips but we would hardly see her as she had a separate spouse programme. She did not demand attention from us and instead quietly fulfilled her official spouse duties.
And yet her quiet demeanour won “fans” from some world leaders and she famously got along with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2018 when her husband made a comeback as the seventh prime minister, she accompanied him to the Asean Summit in Singapore.
One of the leaders who met Dr Mahathir was Putin. There was a picture of Putin holding Dr Siti Hasmah’s hand while Dr Mahathir stood next to them.
She later shared the story of why Putin was holding her hand.
“He stayed at the same hotel we were in. More than 100 security personnel guarded him, which made it difficult for us to see him. Eventually, the guards let us in and we went in to shake his hands. After shaking hands and meeting him, we of course had to take pictures.
“I had to hold someone’s hand. So I held his. Why are you so envious? What is wrong with it?” she asked in jest, causing the crowd to erupt in laughter.
Dr Siti Hasmah, who turned 100 on July 12, was among the pioneering Malay women in the medical profession and was widely recognised for her contributions to maternal and child health.
We cannot deny her role in rural economic empowerment, as well as her support for Malaysian players in badminton tournaments.
In an interview with The Star, she described one of her proudest achievements as helping set up a preparatory course at the National Institute of Public Administration (Intan) for wives of ambassadors and the diplomatic corps and her work with Bakti, the club for wives of ministers and deputy ministers.
When Dr Mahathir retired on Oct 31, 2003, Dr Siti Hasmah said she felt a sense of relief as the country and Malaysians “have returned my husband back to me and family”.
As many queued to pay their respects at the couple’s home at the Mines to Masjid As-Syarif in Taman Sungai Besi Indah and funeral in Putrajaya, it must have been very difficult for Dr Mahathir to maintain his calm composure for he has lost his best friend.
